BIG MOVE

BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith Joins New York Times as Media Columnist

Ben Smith, who has been at BuzzFeed News for over eight years, will leave at the beginning of March.

The editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, Ben Smith, is leaving the website to join The New York Times as a media columnist. NBC News reports that he will serve as a writer for the newspaper’s “Media Equation” column, which the late David Carr wrote before he passed away in 2015. Smith spent eight years building BuzzFeed News into a major player in the news space, making the website a reliable source of political and investigative reporting. Before joining BuzzFeed News in 2011, he was a blogger at Politico. In an email to colleagues, Smith wrote that he is “eager for a spell of writing and reporting and thinking,” and said BuzzFeed News is in a “strong position" and “built to last.”