Ben Smith Leaves BuzzFeed News for The New York Times

Mihir Zaveri, writing for The New York Times:

Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, who built a hard-hitting news operation within a digital media organization better known for clickbait and listicles, will be The New York Times’s next media columnist.

Mr. Smith will leave the digital news outlet to replace Jim Rutenberg, who recently became a writer at large at The Times, splitting duties between the politics desk and The Times Magazine. Before Mr. Rutenberg, the columnist position was held for years by David Carr, the prolific media columnist who died in 2015.

A few months back on my podcast, Dan Frommer observed that contrary to his and my longstanding expectation that the internet would enable startup media outlets to thrive, in the last few years there’s been a concentration of talent at a handful of standard-bearing newspapers: the Times in particular, but also the the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

See also: Smith’s announcement to the BuzzFeed News staff.

★ Tuesday, 28 January 2020