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The Onion’s Last Laugh

Ben Collins on taking over The Onion, taking on YouTube, fighting Alex Jones for InfoWars, and why media’s A.I.-inflected future might look a lot weirder than its past.

Ben Collins
C.E.O. of ‘The Onion,’ Ben Collins Photo: Ben Pennington / The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Julia Alexander
July 24, 2026

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Last week, while catching up with Ben Collins, the former NBC reporter and current C.E.O. of satirical news outfit The Onion, I asked whether he remembered the off-the-record dinner we had attended with Neal Mohan, then YouTube’s chief product officer, who would later succeed Susan Wojcicki as C.E.O. Ben laughed. “The dinner comes up from time to time,” he said.