The Newsweek Daily Beast Company

Last updated
The Newsweek Daily Beast Company
Type Joint venture
Industry Newspapers
Genre media
FoundedNovember 2010
DefunctNovember 2013
Key people
Baba Shetty, CEO [1]
Products Newsweek , The Daily Beast (until 2013)

The Newsweek Daily Beast Company LLC was an American media company, and owner of Newsweek and The Daily Beast . It was established in 2010 as a merger between the two media outlets. The company was owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp and the estate of Sidney Harman, with Stephen Colvin of The Daily Beast as CEO. In August 2013, IBT Media acquired Newsweek, leaving The Daily Beast under the management of The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, which today operates as a subsidiary of IAC. [2]

Contents

History

Newsweek magazine was launched in 1933 by a group of U.S. stockholders "which included Ward Cheney, of the Cheney silk family, John Hay Whitney, and Paul Mellon, son of Andrew W. Mellon," according to America's 60 Families by Ferdinand Lundberg. The Daily Beast was founded in 2008 by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine .

Newsweek was purchased by The Washington Post Company in 1961. [3] With increasing competition from online news sources, years of financial losses forced the Company to sell the magazine in 2010 to Harman Media, owned by Sidney Harman. [4]

Merger

In November 2010, it was announced that Newsweek and The Daily Beast would merge into a joint venture named The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, with IAC and Sidney Harman each owning 50 percent of the new company. Harman's rationale for the merger was that: "In an admittedly challenging time, this merger provides the ideal combination of established journalism authority and bright, bristling website savvy." [5] The company plans to redirect the Newsweek.com address to The Daily Beast, despite the fact that the former has higher traffic.

Tina Brown, who co-founded The Daily Beast, acts as editor-in-chief for both Newsweek and The Daily Beast. [5]

Reception to the merger was not positive. As former Newsweek president Mark Edmiston comments on The New York Times , "I don’t see how you can take two money-losing businesses and put them together and come up with a single entity that makes money." [6] As the two businesses target very different demographics, Edmiston questioned the appeal of the merger to advertisers.

Newsweek staffers reacted ambivalently to the merger. There was opposition to redirecting the Newsweek.com site, due to the amount of effort and work that staffers have spent on building the site. The news came unexpectedly to staffers, a sentiment reflected on SaveNewsweek.com, which states that "It’s always nice to wake up and find out in the Times that your job is doomed". [7]

In 2012, it was announced that Newsweek would stop publishing its print magazine by December. The Newsweek brand would be retooled as Newsweek Global and continue as a digital-only magazine for e-book readers and tablet computers. [8]

On August 3, 2013, IBT Media announced it had acquired Newsweek from IAC on terms that were not disclosed; the acquisition included the Newsweek brand and its online publication, but did not include The Daily Beast. [9]

Company holdings

The company owned Newsweek , a news magazine, and The Daily Beast , a news website.

Related Research Articles

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine founded in 1933. It was a widely distributed newsweekly through the 20th century, with many notable editors-in-chief throughout the years. Newsweek was acquired by The Washington Post Company in 1961, under whose ownership it remained until 2010. Between 2008 and 2012, Newsweek experienced financial difficulties, leading to the cessation of print publication and a transition to an all-digital format at the end of 2012. The print edition was relaunched in March 2014 under different ownership.

Jane Harman

Jane Margaret Lakes Harman is the former U.S. Representative for California's 36th congressional district, serving from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011; she is a member of the Democratic Party. Harman was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee's intelligence subcommittee. When Democrats held the House majority, she was in line to chair the House intelligence committee but was denied the post by then-Speaker Pelosi. Resigning from Congress in February 2011, Harman became President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She succeeded former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton and is the first woman to lead the organization.

UBM plc UK-based media company

UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its current main focus is on B2B events, but its principal operations have included live media and business-to-business communications, marketing services and data provision, and it principally serves the technology, healthcare, trade and transport, ingredients and fashion industries. UBM was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by Informa in June 2018.

Tina Brown British-American journalist

Christina Hambley Brown CBE, is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host, and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she now holds joint citizenship after she took United States citizenship in 2005, following her emigration in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair. By marriage, she is legally titled Lady Evans.

IAC (company) American media and Internet holding company

IAC is an American holding company that owns brands across 100 countries, mostly in media and Internet. The company is headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. Joey Levin, who previously led the company's search & applications segment, has served as Chief Executive Officer since June 2015.

Howard Kurtz American journalist and author

Howard Alan Kurtz is an American journalist and author best known for his coverage of the media.

John Avlon American journalist

John Phillips Avlon is an American journalist and political commentator. He is a Senior Political Analyst and anchor at CNN and was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast from 2013 to 2018. Avlon was previously a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun and chief speechwriter for former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

United Media

United Media was a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, that operated from 1978 to 2011. It syndicated 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core businesses were the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association.

<i>Austin American-Statesman</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper published in Austin, Texas

The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by Gannett.

Sidney Harman

Sidney Harman was a Canadian-born American engineer and businessman active in education, government, industry, and publishing. He was the Chairman Emeritus of Harman International Industries, Inc. A co-founder of Harman Kardon, he also served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce in 1977 and 1978. Late in his life, Harman was also the publisher of Newsweek, having purchased the magazine for one dollar in 2010.

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Christopher Dickey American journalist

Christopher Swift Dickey was an American journalist, author, and news editor. He was the Paris-based world news editor for The Daily Beast. He authored seven books, including Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South (2015); Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force – the NYPD (2009), and a memoir, Summer of Deliverance (1998), about his father, the poet/novelist James Dickey.

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The Daily Beast is an American news website focused on politics, media and pop culture, founded in 2008.

Tunku Varadarajan is a British-Indian writer and journalist, formerly editor of Newsweek Global and Newsweek International. He is currently the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Research Fellow in Journalism at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a contributing editor at POLITICO Europe.

<i>Newsweek Pakistan</i>

Newsweek Pakistan is published by AG Publications, a company wholly owned by Associated Group (AG), under license from Newsweek LLC. The licensing agreement with AG Publications follows similar publishing alliances for Newsweek editions. Newsweek's Asia Pacific edition, published in Hong Kong, has been available in Pakistan for over 50 years. Newsweek Pakistan replaced the Asia Pacific edition, and carries reportage, analysis and opinion on Pakistan in addition to the content featured in the international edition. The Pakistan edition draws upon both its own editorial staff and Newsweek's international network of correspondents.

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The International Business Times is an American online news publication that publishes seven national editions in four languages. The publication, sometimes called IBTimes or IBT, offers news, opinion and editorial commentary on business and commerce. IBT is one of the world's largest online news sources, receiving forty million unique visitors each month. Its 2013 revenues were around $21 million.

StudentAdvisor

StudentAdvisor is a US-based college discovery site owned by The Washington Post Company. On this site students can research colleges with free match and compare tools and browse college reviews written by students and alumni. Registered users have the ability to submit college reviews, ask and answer questions pertaining to college, and connect with a social network of Verified Advisors. StudentAdvisor also publishes college planning guides on a variety of topics including financial aid, admissions, internships, and more. The site is the home of The Top 100 Social Media Colleges, a scientifically calculated list that highlights US colleges best using social media. StudentAdvisor is a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

IBT Media is an American global digital news organization with over 90 million monthly readers. It publishes the International Business Times and Medical Daily, among others. IBT Media is headquartered in New York City, in the Hanover Square neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. As of 2014, the company posted revenue of about $21 million and generated a profit of about $500,000.

References

  1. Hagey, Keach (October 18, 2012). "Newsweek Quits Print". WSJ. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  2. "The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC: Private Company Information". Bloomberg. March 5, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  3. Salisbury, Harrison E. (March 10, 1961). "Washington Post Buys Newsweek. It Acquires 59% of Stock From Astor Foundation for $8,000,000". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-14. The Washington Post Company bought control of Newsweek magazine yesterday from the Vincent Astor Foundation. The sale ended several weeks of intensive negotiation involving a number of publishing companies.
  4. Ahrens, Frank (August 3, 2010). "Harman Media buys Newsweek from Washington Post Co. for undisclosed amount". The Washington Post . Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  5. 1 2 "50/50 Joint Venture will Merge all Newsweek Businesses and The Daily Beast's Digital Assets; Tina Brown to Serve as Editor-in-Chief". The Daily Beast . November 12, 2010. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  6. Carr, David (November 14, 2010). "Newsweek Weds Daily Beast? Good Luck With That". The New York Times . Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  7. Tiku, Nitasha (November 15, 2010). "Passive-Aggressive Notes From the Online Staff at Newsweek". New York . Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  8. Saba, Jennifer (18 October 2012). "After 79 years in print, Newsweek goes digital only". Reuters. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
  9. "IBT Media to Acquire Newsweek". Press release. August 3, 2013. Archived from the original on October 14, 2014. Retrieved 2013-08-04.