No sooner did the ink dry on the Newsweek-Daily Beast merger, than it claimed its first casualty in what could be a tumultuous marriage between print and the Web.
Newsweek CEO Tom Ascheim — the Washington Post Co. holdover who had stayed on board after stereo mogul Sidney Harman bought Newsweek for $1 – was ousted the same day Newsweek and the Daily Beast announced they would be partners in a new joint venture.
Harman was slated to address the Newsweek staff around noon.
The on-again, off-again negotiations between Newsweek’s Harman and Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/InterActive Corp., the founder of the Daily Beast, finally wrapped up late last night and the deal was officially announced this morning.
DAILY BEAST MERGING WITH NEWSWEEK
“It didn’t get finished until 3 a.m. in the morning,” Harman told The Post.
Tina Brown, the Beast’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be the editor-in-chief of both Newsweek and the Daily Beast.
“I see Newsweek and the Beast as a marriage between Newsweek’s journalistic depth and the vibrant versatility The Daily Beast has realized on the web,” said Brown.
“The metabolism of The Daily Beast will help power the resurgence of Newsweek and Newsweek amplifies the range of talent and audience The Daily Beast can reach. The two entities together offer writers, photographers and marketers a powerful dual platform.”
There are hurdles from the start, including where the two organizations will be housed, how to resolve disputes in a 50-50 venture and how to combine a unionized and a non-unioned workforce into one cohesive unit.
From the looks of it on Day One, however, it appears the IAC-Daily Beast side is running the show. The president of the Daily Beast, Stephen Colvin, will serve as CEO of the combined venture.
Brown said in a posting on the Daily Beast site last night that the deal was sealed on Tuesday over a mug of coffee in IAC’s headquarters on West 18th Street, a glass tower close to the Hudson River. But that only underscores one of the issues, which is deciding where the two operations reside.
Newsweek is in the process of moving to its new home on Hanover Square in downtown Manhattan after vacating the offices that the Washington Post had leased for it downtown.
Newsweek has about 80 journalists and editors covered by the Newspaper Guild contract, which the new ownership and Guild members recently agreed upon. The Daily Beast has about 60 staffers, all non-union.