“I’ve known Ben Lerer a long time,” Mr. Peretti said in the Thursday interview. “I had a conversation with him, and I’ve had conversations with C.E.O.s of a lot of other companies, and I think there’s value to being in the mix and talking to people and being open for the right deal at the right time.”
Mr. Lerer said the timing of the talks was not right, “or else we would have done something.”
Last year, Group Nine acquired PopSugar, a digital publisher focused on millennial women. Mr. Lerer left open the possibility that a BuzzFeed deal could still take place.
“I have immense respect for Jonah, and I will always have an open dialogue with him and others,” he said.
A month after the June walkout, BuzzFeed recognized the union, the NewsGuild of New York, which also represents Times employees. Mr. Smith was charged with handling the matter from the management side, and he was keen to come to an agreement with the staff.
He was also growing restless. In the past few months, he wrote more than a dozen articles, a change from the recent past, when his byline appeared a few times a year. In November he wrote a column analyzing the succession planning at The Times. Dean Baquet, the executive editor, will retire in a few years, and Mr. Smith offered a lengthy exegesis on who might succeed him.
In December, at the Lambs Club, a restaurant on West 44th Street, Mr. Smith met with Mr. Baquet and Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor of The Times and a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family that controls the paper. They discussed the media-columnist job over lunch.
“I thought, ‘Wow that would be a lot of fun,’” Mr. Smith said. “I had been eager to get back to reporting for a while. This made sense.”
Mr. Smith, who starts March 2, won’t be a part of the Times union.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/business/media/buzzfeed-news.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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