Well, that was meta. The former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, Ben Smith, made a splashy debut in his new gig as The New York Times’ media columnist on Sunday night, a position most famously held by the late David Carr.

Amid some light self-aggrandizing — Smith makes much of his six-years-earlier job offer to New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger — Smith argues that the Times’ incredible success doesn’t look like a tide that will lift all newspaper boats. (If you’ve read Nieman Lab much over the past half-decade or so, you’ve heard that before.)

The Times, which has more digital subscribers than The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and all 250 local Gannett papers combined, may evolve into something like a monopoly, he argues, vacuuming up top talent from competing newsrooms and crowding out competitors with overwhelming resources (like a starting salary for reporters in the six figures, though the NewsGuild gets much of the credit for that).

The Times so dominates the news business that it has absorbed many of the people who once threatened it: The former top editors of Gawker, Recode, and Quartz are all at The Times, as are many of the reporters who first made Politico a must-read in Washington.

(Those former top editors would be Choire Sicha, Kara Swisher, and Kevin Delaney, who are the editor of Styles, a regular columnist, and leader of some secret project in Opinion, respectively.)

As a journalist this honestly is a very real career consideration and I'm glad that someone is saying it out loud in the pages of the Times. Thanks, @benyt. https://t.co/V7ZPC9yn5B

— Dara Lind (@DLind) March 2, 2020

The piece was published online on Sunday night and the Times sent a push alert to promote the column, evoking the days when a Carr column’s Sunday p.m. reveal would set the tone of the week’s discussion around media. Journalists and media types on Twitter starting chiming in immediately — once it got past mocking Smith’s Twitter evolution from @BuzzFeedBen to…@benyt? (BeNYT? BenYT?)

David Carr used to tell me that (one of) the reasons people outside The Times liked to read him, was because he “would bring a baseball bat inside the building when it was needed, and start swinging.”

Looks like Ben just picked up the bat. https://t.co/xcKxT3z5is

— Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) March 2, 2020

Smith also broke some interesting news from inside the house. Though The Wall Street Journal had reported in January that podcasting company Serial Productions was for sale and that the Old Gray Lady was considered a potential suitor, Smith confirmed the Times is in “exclusive talks” to purchase the company behind the true-crime podcasts Serial and S-Town — for “significantly less” than its initial $75 million sale price. (Our Nick Quah recently noted some internal shuffling that seemed to augur a sale soon.) Smith also says the Times’ audio offerings, led by flagship podcast The Daily, could become a paid product, like the company’s subscription-based Cooking or Crossword packages, “that executives believe could become the HBO of podcasts.”

(Flashback to 2015: “Gimlet wants to become the ‘HBO of podcasting,'” in the quality-content sense. And Luminary was supposed to be the “HBO of podcasting” in the charging-money sense, and it’s now run by an HBO guy.)

BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti sounded less than impressed that Smith managed to publish his first scoops before his first official day at the Times.

This article was reported out last week when ⁦@benyt⁩ was still on BuzzFeed payroll. Usually we only provide free content to Facebook and Google 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/iv6Nk07RDy

— Jonah Peretti (@peretti) March 2, 2020

BuzzFeed PR had its own tongue-in-cheek styleguide concerns.

Said goodbye to @benyt less than 48 hours ago and he’s already forgotten to capitalize the “F” 🧐 pic.twitter.com/EpIKGmLCqP

— BuzzFeed PR (@BuzzFeedPR) March 2, 2020

We know that Americans are more willing to pay for local news if they know local outlets are struggling. The very visible success of the Times, some suggested, might prevent people from noticing that newspapers are struggling in their own towns and cities.

I'll add another argument to this @benyt column: People look at the success of the Times and assume journalism is rebounding writ large. It shocks me how often people are surprised when I tell them that local journalism is doing poorly. https://t.co/xJkRyevRxV

— David Kroman (@KromanDavid) March 2, 2020

Smith also got some pushback from editors with a vantage point outside New York City.

I have spent my whole career reporting on tech monopolies, and I told @benyt (but apparently not in punchy quotable form) that @nytimes (and most news) is the opposite of a monopoly. It gets less valuable to readers the bigger it gets. https://t.co/JkUd7lQqiF

— Jessica Lessin (@Jessicalessin) March 2, 2020

I think it’s great @benyt took this on as his first column. But also: as a local newspaper editor I don’t think the @nytimes’ success has anything to do with our own future. If anything, we’ve learned a lot from it’s digital subs business and more. https://t.co/uAadiKKtRB

— Mitch Pugh📰 (@SCMitchP) March 2, 2020

Good read from @benyt, but this quote [not from Ben] is just wrong. NYT representative of one model that will work in future (subscriptions based on acquiring the top talent), but we will also see a big rise in product-backed media in the next decade. https://t.co/KDMsiAemNU pic.twitter.com/ajthRFhqop

— brad 🍃 (@bradesposito) March 2, 2020

The @nytimes is stronger than ever, but journalism, fortunately, isn’t a zero-sum game. Wherever you live, support local news—newspapers, nonprofits, public media—because our democracy can’t survive without it. https://t.co/gxU58MTZOU

— Sewell Chan (@sewellchan) March 2, 2020

Proud to remain a holdout :) https://t.co/CQy5diQElg

— Shani Olisa Hilton (@shani_o) March 2, 2020

Immediate reax to @benyt column: If NYT has found a solution for running a newspaper (invest in journalism, drive online $), and it works, then will investors demand that Gannett & others running the strategy of "job cuts + dividends & hope" change course?https://t.co/VnpWXFRfO4

— Derek Wallbank (@dwallbank) March 2, 2020

"I worry that the success of The Times is crowding out the competition," writes @benyt, who left his job at @BuzzFeedNews to work for said @nytimes. https://t.co/SVdRYJqAQw

— Charles Ornstein (@charlesornstein) March 2, 2020

Reminded why I (genuinely) love twitter this morning. Keeps you honest https://t.co/54XCc82K7B

— Ben Smith (@benyt) March 2, 2020