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.
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.
