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.”