Ben Collins | |
|---|---|
 Collins in 2022 | |
| Education | Emerson College (BS) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Awards | Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism |
Ben Collins is an American businessman and journalist from Massachusetts. He was a former reporter for the news division of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and became the CEO of the media company Global Tetrahedron, which owns The Onion , in 2024. [1] [2]
Collins is from the U.S. state of Massachusetts. His mother is a librarian. [3] [4] He attended Emerson College between 2006 and 2010. [3] While enrolled at Emerson, he was a music columnist for The Berkeley Beacon , the college's student newspaper. [1] [3] During college, he was a roommate of Chris Hurst, with whom he co-hosted a radio show as an undergraduate. [1] [5]
Following his graduation from Emerson, Collins began his career at Slam before performing social media work for Hulu. [3] Following his time at Hulu, Collins became a news editor of Esquire in 2013, [3] [6] where he remained for a year until he was hired by The Daily Beast . [3]
Between 2014 and 2018, Collins worked in various roles for The Daily Beast as a senior news editor and technology reporter. [1] [4] While Collins was employed at The Daily Beast, Hurst's girlfriend Alison Parker was shot and killed on live television. [5] Though Collins had not met Parker, [5] the incident and its aftermath deeply affected him; he decided to pursue reporting about online conspiracy theories and the far right after that. [1] [3]
At The Daily Beast, Collins frequently reported alongside researcher Brandy Zadrozny, who had joined the publication in 2013. [4] When offered an opportunity to work at NBC News in March 2018, Collins accepted it on the condition that he would be allowed to bring Zadrozny along to join him. [1]
In 2018, Collins and Zadrozny departed The Daily Beast to join NBC News. [1] [4] Collins has received special recognition from the 2023 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. [7] [8]
In December 2022, following controversial comments Collins made on social media that NBC says ran afoul of its social media standards, NBC temporarily suspended Collins from covering Elon Musk and Twitter. [9] [10]
In April 2024, Collins was announced as the CEO of Global Tetrahedron, a company that has purchased the satirical website The Onion . Its name is a reference to a fictional company described in Onion publications. [2] The purchase originated from a post by Collins on Bluesky after news broke that then-owner G/O was looking to offload the magazine among other titles. [11] [12]
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