Newsweek sniffs out Daily Beast's Brown

There have been prominent WashPost and Newsweek links on the Daily Beast website since its launch two years ago, and now that the nation's number two news magazine, Newsweek, has changed hands for only a dollar to a deep-pockets owner willing to take on its debts, the redoubtable Ms Brown of the Daily Beast may soon up for double editorial duties and double exposure. She's always been more a features gal than a breaking news buff, so it will be fun to watch her later trajectory. The supposed rivalry between her and Arianna Huffington, the other aggregate cyber siren, has been satirized on Arianna's website.
Hat tip to Romenesko, via NY Times and WS Journal for the following story:

As speculation continues about a merger between The Daily Beast, the news and opinion Web site financed by Barry Diller, and Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal reports that the likelihood of a deal is increasing.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the discussions, said as part of the deal currently being discussed by the two companies, Tina Brown, The Daily Beast’s co-founder and co-owner, would become the editor of Newsweek, on top of her existing editorial duties at the Web site.

Speculation about a possible tie-up between the two companies resurfaced last week after Howard Kurtz, a three-decade veteran of The Washington Post, announced he was leaving to join The Daily Beast. Industry watchers suggested that Newsweek would provide a more logical home for Mr. Kurtz’s work given his long tenure as a print reporter.

However, the newspaper said that Sidney Harman, the audio equipment magnate who bought Newsweek in August, may be concerned about issues of control:

People familiar with Mr. Harman’s thinking said he may be wary of handing the reins to a strong-willed editor who also answers to another boss—Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of Daily Beast owner IAC/InterActive Corp.

Newsweek, which Mr. Harman bought from The Washington Post Company for $1, lost almost $30 million last year amid circulation and advertising declines.

Meanwhile, The Daily Beast, which averages 4.6 million visitors a month, is expected to lose about $10 million this year, The Journal said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

However, The Daily Beast executives say the portal is on its way to becoming profitable in two years, according to the Journal.

Last week, in a piece marking The Daily Beast’s second anniversary, Ms. Brown responded to the buzz about a deal with Newsweek by saying: “Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.”

Newsweek seeks new editor- no takers so far

Hat tip to Keith J. Kelly, The New York Post columnist who writes Media Ink

Pressure is mounting to find a new editor-in-chief of Newsweek, as the staff defections continue in the wake of the sale two weeks ago to stereo mogul Sidney Harman.

Jon Meacham, the current editor-in-chief, is telling staffers he hopes to pack it in by Labor Day.

And the short list of candidates to replace him is growing shorter by the day.

The most logical inside candidate, Fareed Zakaria, is said to have told Harman he is not interested in the job. Speculation is rampant that he may be the next big name to jump ship.

Walter Isaacson, current CEO of the Aspen Institute think tank, a former editor of Time and one-time head of CNN, is also showing no interest, despite his friendship with Harman, an Aspen Institute board member.

"I've already run a weekly magazine," Isaacson said. "I have no interest in it."

Some insiders have been actively pushing for Tina Brown, currently head of The Daily Beast Web site.

It's a long shot, but Newsweek CEO Tom Ascheim, who is staying on board as president under Harman, is said to be listening.

Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, book author and prolific writer of dozens of cover stories during his 24 years at the magazine, yesterday became the latest staffer to defect in what is becoming a serious brain drain.

Thomas, author most recently of "The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898," from Little, Brown earlier this year, is going to teach at Princeton and work on writing his next book for Little, a bio of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Said one insider of Brown: "She's the best magazine editor out there without a magazine and she'd bring a lot of attention to Newsweek."

Barry Diller, boss of IAC, which is bankrolling Brown and The Daily Beast, is on the board of the Washington Post Co., so he would be familiar with the pluses and minuses of the magazine. Wash Post said that in the first half of 2010 the magazine lost $8.5 million.

Diller could not be reached for comment.

And Brown, who has edited Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and the late Talk magazine, said she's not interested. "I very much admire Sidney Harman's willingness to take on a great news magazine that needs reinvention," she said. "But I've never been happier than in my partnership with Barry Diller creating The Daily Beast."



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The tweaking of Tina Brown

Lady Evans (aka Tina Brown) and her subject, Lady Di (the Princess of Wales)
The July issue of Vanity Fair ran portions of their ex-editor Tina Brown's book, "The Diana Chronicles," but now comes a parody of the best seller and Brown's distinctive writing style in the August issue, reprinted from the naughty British weekly, Private Eye. (hat tip to Women's Wear Daily)
Under a photo of blonde Brown giving a thumbs up and a bogus byline, author Craig Brown (no common bloodline) mocks Brown's penchant for the hyphenated phrase, for alliteration and for status indicators:

"Those regal, rancorous, rough-hewn eyes seared…like a $5,000 kitchen knife from top store Macy's on New York's fashionable Broadway through butter served in the in-crowd, book-six-months-in-advance brasserie of super-sassy boutique hotel McDitzy's, Park Avenue." Brown's use of sourcing is also lampooned: "I was informed of it by a highly trained researcher who was told in confidence by a highly regarded source, who heard it from a highly placed member of the household who is now dead, so equally regrettably you have no means of checking it."

Brown e-mailed her old rag that she was "very flattered and amused by the parody. I have always been some kind of fixation for Craig Brown for some reason." She said she believed the two hadn't met, but called him "a very funny writer, especially with parody." As for whether she saw it as a jab from Graydon Carter, her successor at Vanity Fair: "Graydon has been very appreciative and civil" about the book. Carter's sole comment was, via a spokeswoman, "We thought it was funny."