Ben Collins | |
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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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