Newsweek Study: Americans Will Work For 25 Cents an Hour is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sidney Harman, who purchased ailing weekly magazine Newsweek in August of 2010, has died, The Daily Beast is reporting.

Harman, a “stereo equipment mogul,” purchased the struggling property late last summer for a buck and the assumption of Newsweek‘s liabilities. In November, The Daily Beast gobbled up Newsweek, supplanting its website. The new media property was the first to post about Harman’s death in the form of a statement from the Harman family:

Sidney Harman died last night of complications from acute myeloid leukemia at the young age of almost 93. He first learned of his illness one month ago and remained vigorously engaged as Executive Chairman of Newsweek, and Chairman of the Academy for Polymathic Study at the University of Southern California. He died in Washington, D.C., a city he loved and supported in so many ways, surrounded by his wife and children. Funeral arrangements will be private. Celebrations of Sidney’s extraordinary life will be held both in Washington and Los Angeles, at dates still to be determined.

Harman is survived by his children and his wife, former Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman.

Newsweek owner Sidney Harman dies at 92 is a post from: The Inquisitr

In what has to be one of the strangest, yet very interesting, match-ups of old and new media we get news that after Daily Beast and Newsweek joining forces the Newsweek site is going to be shut down. Now this is a site with 3.8 million monthly unique visitors while Daily Beast only manages 1.5 million which makes one kind of shake their head.

From MediaWeek we get this

The Beast is the survivor, said Stephen Colvin, the company’s new CEO, “Because the Daily Beast is a very credible and successful news and opinion Web site. And with great vitality and distinct voice.”

As expected, Newsweek CEO Tom Ascheim (who, ironically, was brought on to pump up Newsweek digitally) is leaving the company.

The Newsweek and Daily Beast staffs will be combined under Tina Brown, the Beast founder who was named the company’s new chief editor. The combined staff will work out of the financial district, where Newsweek was already planning to relocate after its sale to Sidney Harman three months ago. The move is scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

A strange pairing of companies but an even stranger reasoning about which of the two sites to keep alive.

Daily Beast chews up Newsweek and wins the battle of sites is a post from: The Inquisitr

After extensive negotiations that looked like a non-starter not too long ago, troubled print publication Newsweek has announced a merger with The Daily Beast.

Tina Brown, who edited Vanity Fair and The New Yorker before founding The Daily Beast, commented on the merger on her site last night:

“Working at the warp-speed of a 24/7 news operation, we now add the versatility of being able to develop ideas and investigations that require a different narrative pace suited to the medium of print,” Brown wrote.

She added that Newsweek, founded in 1933, now gains “a thriving frontline of breaking news and commentary that will raise the profile of the magazine’s bylines.”

While Newsweek has had its share of issues with declining readership and stiff competition from online media, Daily Finance points out that The Daily Beast has suffered a loss of traffic as well in the recent past:

The merger may be a marriage of two wounded media operations. Newsweek has lost scads of staff since it was sold by The Post, and it currently has no editor. The Daily Beast has been losing readership. Research firm Compete says the number of unique visitors to the site has dropped from 2.18 million in June to 1.55 million in September — a fall of nearly 30%. Rival Huffington Post has 12.2 million monthly unique visitors.

Oddly, the post above also indicates that The Daily Beast plans to introduce a print edition, despite both outlets currently operating “in the red.”

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Ailing Newsweek hooks up with The Daily Beast is a post from: The Inquisitr

So Newsweek has published its technology predictions for the coming year and while most of them are borderline possibles there is one that stands out. In at number nine is the prediction that Steve Ballmer will be shown the door as a present for his 10th anniversary with the company.

This folks is the best thing that could happen for the company regardless of how well Windows 7 has helped them rebound. As Newsweek points out – Microsoft stock has dropped nearly 50 percent during the ten years that Ballmer has been leading the company.

Not only that but under his direction Microsoft has missed the boat on pretty well every single big new tech market during those ten years. As far as the Windows brand it is my opinion the only reason it got rescued was because of Steven Sinofsky taking over.

One has to wonder just what it would take for a real shareholders revolt to take hold or if Ballmer will decide to take a very long vacation before that happens.

Unfortunately though this is one prediction from Newsweek I don’t think we will come true – much to the detriment of the company and employees.

The one Newsweek Tech prediction that would give Microsoft fans wet dreams if true is a post from: The Inquisitr

Failed GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin features on the cover of Newsweek this week, and the photo used has got the darling of the uber-right fuming.

The Sarah Palin Newsweek cover uses a photo originally taken for Runner’s World magazine and shows Palin posing in running gear including rather short shorts.

Palin took to Facebook to slam the cover, claiming that the photo selection was sexist and was engineered by the liberal media to distract attention from the release of her memoir Going Rogue.

“When it comes to Sarah Palin, this ‘news’ magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness — a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation” Palin said on Facebook.

“The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.”

Image: Newsweek under fair use

Sarah Palin Claims Newsweek Cover is Sexist is a post from: The Inquisitr

Dan Lyons, the writer/ journalist formerly know as The Real Dan Lyons formerly know as The Fake Steve Jobs is quitting blogging after having a post yanked this week by his employer Newsweek.

Jordan Golson from the Industry Standard reports that Dan told him “that he is hanging up his personal blog as RealDanLyons.com after his Newsweek bosses made him yank his post where Lyons (rightly) called Yahoo’s PR staff ‘lying sacks of shit’

 
Lyons slammed the company after Yahoo flacks told him just weeks ago that the Google/Yahoo search deal was a “sure thing” and that Jerry Yang wasn’t going anywhere. “Then that deal fell apart. And now Jerry Yang is out on his ass. The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever.”

We aren’t sure exactly how things went down, but the Yahoo PR post and several others are gone too.
 

You can read my early post today that has the complete transcript of the post he was ordered to pull. Also while Dan was out slamming people today he also had a few choice words for AllThingsD writer Kara Swisher

 
Lyons slammed All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher for touting an “exclusive” that Yang was stepping down — an exclusive that was posted five minutes before Yahoo’s official press release — and then emailing other reporters who failed to note that she “broke” the story. Those highly amusing posts are gone from his site too.
 

This folks is the ugly side of blogging when you are doing it for a paycheck. Luckily enough I have a great enough boss here at The Inquisitr that this type of thing isn’t something I have to worry about.

In the meantime – give ‘em hell Dan. You are my hero for the day.

Dan Lyons Says Kiss My Ass and Quits Blogging is a post from: The Inquisitr

Case in point was a post he wrote yesterday about the ouster of Jerry Yang that was a great reminder of why his Fake Steve Jobs blog became as famous as it did. Unfortunately his masters at Newsweek didn’t seem to be in agreement and as a result his Jerry Yang out post has turned into a 404 page

So what was it that was so bad about Dan’s post? Well lucky for you I just happen to have a copy saved in my feed reader which you can now read in its entirety below

And Chairman Roy Bostock says it’s the right time for this to happen. I only wish you could have been on the phone for my conversation just — what — a month ago, when the same Roy Bostock swore up and down to me that Jerry Yang wasn’t going anywhere because he was absolutely the greatest leader the world has ever known. “Nobody knows this company better than Jerry Yang,” said Roy. “Jerry is the right person to continue to lead Yahoo.” Roy also insisted that Yahoo did the right thing by passing up Microsoft’s offer, even though the stock now stands at one-third the price Ballmer had offered to pay. See that story here. I’d never dealt much with Yahoo before, and I was stunned by their PR operators — they’re really an unsavory bunch. During that same reporting this crack team of lying sacks of shit put one of Yahoo’s attorneys in Washington on the phone to tell me, over and over, the true “inside story” of what was going on with the Google deal, which was, he informed me, that the deal with Google was a sure thing, definitely going to happen, no way in hell is the deal not going to happen, there are no real objections from the regulators, they’re fine with it, the objections from advertisers are not an issue, blah blah blah. Then that deal fell apart. And now Jerry Yang is out on his ass. The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever.

One more thing: Will Microsoft come back to the table? And how much will they pay?

Like they say – on the Internet nothing ever really disappears. As Paul Boutin asked in his post about this

We can’t think of a single Fake Steve Jobs post that Dan redacted while at Forbes. Can you?

Well can you?

Has Newsweek thrown the gag around Dan Lyons? is a post from: The Inquisitr