Last night the NY Observer broke the news that the on-and-off merger plans of venerable weekly Newsweek and hot-shot online property The Daily Beast was back on again. Today, all-star editor Tina Brown confirmed as much in a post published this morning on The Daily Beast that explains what the new media marraige will mean. First of all, lots of individuals in the media analysis game seem to have a hard time wrapping their head’s around how a business that lost $20 Million last year (Newsweek) can merge with a business that is estimated to lose $10 Million a year (The Daily Beast) and have it make any business sense whatsoever. Allow me to thumbnail some basics of how this deal could conceivably work. The truth is that The Daily Beast seems to churn out an issue’s worth of content for a print version each day, so the costs of Newsweek‘s operations (which some insiders have claimed to be still stuck in a pre-digital construct) should dissipate rather dramatically. Sadly, for many editorial staffers at Newsweek, that doesn’t spell great news. Further, despite the hand-wringing of the death of traditional publishing, advertisers in print still pay dollars to the comparative online penny. This means that, even in the leanest of times, the ad revenue for Newsweek is far more robust than that of The Daily Beast (or any online property for that matter.) Further, Ms. Brown is well regarded as someone capable of re-energizing troubled titles. She is considered to be that good. But enough about that, allow Ms. Brown to explain the merits of the merger:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=118266