For Daily Beast insiders, the looming deadline is the first week of October.
That’s when IAC/InterActiveCorp boss Barry Diller told staffers he will make a decision on the struggling website’s future.
Coming 24 hours after Tina Brown, the Beast’s editor-in-chief and driving force, announced she would leave by Dec. 31, the Diller news sent yet another jolt through the shell- shocked newsroom.
Everything is on the table and a sale is definitely one of the options being contemplated, one source familiar with the situation said.
So is a shutdown — as well as a third option, keeping it afloat at IAC a bit longer to see if its losses can be trimmed to the single-digit millions.
The Daily Beast is expected to bleed more than $20 million in red ink this year.
Meanwhile, over the past few months — perhaps fearing the end is near — there has been a conga line of executives heading for the exit.
Brown said ’s announcement yesterday that she was leaving to form Tina Brown Live Media and was taking the Women in the World summit with her as part of her exit.
In addition, two of the people listed as directors of the Women in the World Foundation at the time of its last public filing are long gone.
One-time CEO Steve Colvin left last October for a consulting gig with Lerer Ventures. Another foundation director, chief legal counsel Randy Shapiro, jumped ship to Bloomberg LP last month.
Colvin’s successor as CEO, Baba Shetty, left in June — less than a year after his arrival — saying he wanted to “spend more time with his family during the summer.”
Within weeks, he had landed a new job at Digitas.
Rob Gregory, the president of Newsweek/Daily Beast is exiting in mid-October.
Gary Starr, the chief financial officer, left in July for Affinity Group. On the editorial side, Executive Editor Justine Rosenthal, once part of Tina’s inner circle, left in mid-summer. Sources said she had grown disenchanted with Brown in her final months, although her departure was also tied to the sale of Newsweek.
“The revolving door was not part of Diller’s master plan,” said one source of the departures. Nevertheless, none of the individuals have been replaced. Either by luck or design, it has the effect of clearing the decks — and cutting expenses — a positive move should Diller be thinking of selling.
Rhona Murphy, a refugee from Newsweek International, is the acting CEO and John Avlon, a well-liked senior editor, is being touted as the individual most likely to get the top job — if there is a top job to be had come October. Deidre Depke is also highly touted on the edit side.
Diller at the moment is considering all options, insiders now say.
“Without the drama of Tina, it’s a nice property,” said one source optimistically.
Diller’s announcement to Daily Beast staffers did not calm the waters. In a memo to staff Thursday, Diller said, “Yesterday’s rushed announcement of Tina Brown’s resignation wasn’t at all what had been intended.”
Diller said Diller in the memo staffers in which he insisted the decision to exit had been Brown’s.
“Tina Brown had told me more than month ago that she didn’t wish to continue as editor in chief of the Daily Beast. We had agreed to announce this sometime during the month of September and were on course to do so.”
But while he threw in the obligatory line or two praising her great work, he then dropped the bombshell announcement that insiders had been fearing.
ComScore has put the website’s unique visitors under six million a month at a time when most media buyers demand 10 to 20 million uniques to grab their attention.
“I can’t make promises for the future, but I’m hopeful we can continue to publish the Beast with as much energy, verve and moment[um] as Tina gave us,” said Diller in the memo. “What I can promise is that we will come to a conclusion by the first week of October.”
That happens to be budget planning time for IAC, the publicly traded, cash-rich parent company that includes Match.com, CollegeHumor and Ask.com.
It probably doesn’t help that around this same budget planning time a year ago, was when Diller unveiled his plan to stop printing a weekly paper edition of Newsweek at year end. Earlier this year, he unveiled plans to sell the surviving digital version to International Business Times’ parent company IBT Media. IAC still has to finish putting out the last two issues before the Newsweek sale is finalized at the end of the month. And then it is decision time for the Daily Beast.
“Trying to speculate is kind of ridiculous,” said one insider, “because nobody knows what is in Barry’s head.”
But the source added, “Barry’s a businessman. And he’s very unsentimental.”