The NewsBeast is ALIVE!
But it has problems aplenty, not the least of which is surviving Tina Brown‘s star system — great if you’re enjoying most-favored reporter status and hell if you are not.
The inevitable result is staff discord, with many veteran Newsweekers feeling that they are being branded as stupid, old-media types — regardless of their credentials.
In the new joint venture, 92-year-old Sidney Harman is finally merging Newsweek with the Daily Beast, owned by Barry Diller‘s IAC/InteractiveCorp.
The deal was finalized yesterday, nearly three months after it was first announced back on Nov. 12.
Now, the real work begins as Diller and Harman try to figure out how a struggling newsweekly that lost about $20 million last year and the Daily Beast — which lost about $10 million — can now be combined into a new entity, The Newsweek/Daily Beast Co.
Harman said that the venture is “an equal partnership.” And asked if he anticipated losses of $10 million this year, he said, “We will do better than that.” But he declined to say how much better.
Many insiders remaining at Newsweek have abandoned the idea of the joint venture being a “merger.” Most say it is more like a “takeover of Newsweek by the Daily Beast.”
Said Harman of the takeover talk, “It is simply not so. To the extent some of that feeling may exist, what puts it at rest is the actual operations going forward.”
There will be layoffs, post-merger, Harman acknowledged, but would not say how many.
“In any intelligent merger, there is some readjustment,” said Harman, “We’re in the process of making some relatively modest adjustments.”
Although Brown is now officially the editor-in-chief of the joint venture, in reality she has been operating as if the staffs were combined for weeks, even while the Beast is housed in IAC’s sparkling glass tower on West 18th Street and Newsweek is in cubbies at 7 Hanover Square downtown.
Said one insider at Newsweek, “Morale is nonexistent. Everyone I know is just waiting for a buyout offer so they can scoot. Beast management is total amateur hour. There are all sorts of editors rushing around now between the Beast and Newsweek.”
But that is not to say Brown doesn’t have some fans inside, either. Said one: “Tina’s operation — whether at Newsweek or The Daily Beast — is about real reporting, real news, characters, narrative and style. It’s the kind of thing you get in this business to do. Does it make economic sense? It just might, because so many other media have lost touch with these fundamentals. Anyway, let’s hope.”
The goodwill accorded Harman as the savior of the magazine has eroded considerably. “Sidney has been the invisible man,” grumbled one staffer.
“Who knows where he is, or what he’s doing or whether he even knows what a total cluster**** the place has become.”
Eventually, the plan is to bring everyone under one roof inside the IAC building. So far — other than the appearance of a press release — none of the executives has appeared in either office post-merger to explain what is going to happen in the new era.
New training
No longer will John Mancini be paid to stand on subway stations and rail platforms in the snow.
Cable news outlet NY1 is losing Mancini, its intrepid transit correspondent, who is jumping into the arms of Bonnie Fuller and her year-and-half-old celebrity news Web site, Hollywoodlife.com, as news editor.
In his new job, Mancini “will work closely with Fuller on editorial strategy, content development” and he will “oversee the Hollywoodlife.com reporting team,” according to a statement. Mancini did not return calls.
The obvious plan is for Mancini to take over some of the day-to-day management of reporting staff while Fuller cooks up new spin-off sites, such as the recently launched Hollybaby.com for new moms.
Mancini held the editor-in-chief job at Newsday for five tumultuous years and under three different owners. He took the entry-level job with the cable channel shortly after he was forced out at Newsday last year, ending a period of growing acrimony between himself and the daily’s latest owner, Cablevision CEO James Dolan.
Bad News
In the latest drip, drip, drip of downsizing at the Daily News, Jon Beck was out as of last Friday as vice president, online advertising and business development. Calls to his office were greeted with, “He’s no longer with the company.” No replacement has been named.
The rumbling is that it is the start of a new round of cutbacks on the business side of the embattled paper following editorial cuts in Washington DC and other bureau offices. kkelly@nypost.com