Without the Daily Beast, Newsweek Looks More Like Newsweak
Maybe it's a waste of time to do an autopsy on a merger that didn't happen, but, nonetheless, the deal that is now not going to happen between The Daily Beast and Newsweek raises real questions about whether Newsweek owner Sidney Harman knows what's best for the media property he bought from The Washington Post for $1 in August.
Here, on the morning after, what's left of Newsweek is almost a waste land: a thin magazine, a Web site that's no more than a simple blog, and a staff that loses talent every day. While big departures like Fareed Zakaria and Michael Isikoff have gotten the headlines, the journo newsletter Gorkana has been reading lately like a "Where Are They Now?" index of departed Newsweek employees. Presumably, if Daily Beast editor Tina Brown had swooped in, an up-and-coming talent or two might have been convinced to stay.
While a post I did last week on this -- when the merger looked likely -- focused on how Brown might rejuvenate the print brand, in the aftermath, I'm crucially aware of how desperately Newsweek could have used a Web strategy akin to the Daily Beast's as well. Per a post from Brown this morning about the breakdown in talks, the site's monthly traffic has doubled in the last year to 4.6 million, and it has signed on dozens of new advertisers. But more importantly, it's weaving itself into the fabric of the Web -- and increasingly, if you don't really have a strong online presence, you don't exist.
One wonders if 92-year-old Sidney Harman realizes this - though, granted, it's easy to make assumptions that nonagenarians aren't that into the Web. The rumor mill has it that talks broke down over who would really be in control. The irony is that as Newsweek continues to drift along in search of a strategy, Harman may have just loosened his grasp on the magazine's best possible destiny.
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