The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast's logo consists of the words "The Daily Beast" in white text on a red square.
Type of site
 News
Available in English
Owner IAC
Created by Tina Brown
Editor John Avlon
Website thedailybeast.com
Alexa rank Decrease 1,441 (Global March 2017)
Commercial Yes
Registration None
Launched 6 October 2008 (2008-10-06)
Current status Active

The Daily Beast is an American news and opinion website focused on politics and pop culture. In a 2015 interview, editor in chief John Avlon described The Beast's editorial approach: "We seek out scoops, scandals and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots and hypocrites".[1]

History

The Daily Beast began publishing on 6 October 2008, The Beast's founding editor was Tina Brown, a former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk magazine. Brown stepped down as editor in September 2013.[2] John Avlon, an American journalist and political commentator as well as a CNN contributor, is the site's editor-in-chief and managing director.[3][4] In March 2017 former chief strategy and product officer Mike Dyer left for Intel.[5] In May 2017, Heather Dietrick was appointed president and publisher.[6]

The name of the site was taken from a fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop.[7]

Editorial stance

The site has been described as liberal.[8] In November 2016 Daily Beast president Mike Dyer said of the site, "We have always prided ourselves on being independent and nonpartisan and that continues now."[9] In April 2017 Avlon discussed the organization's approach on The Poynter Institute's podcast saying, "Our commitment is to be nonpartisan but not neutral...We're going to hit both sides where appropriate. We're not going to toe any partisan line."[10]

Format

A feature of The Daily Beast is the "Cheat Sheet", billed as "must reads from all over". Published throughout the day, the Cheat Sheet offers a selection of articles from online news outlets on popular stories. The Cheat Sheet includes brief summaries of the article, and a link to read the full text of the article on the website of its provider.

Since the launch, the site has introduced additional sections, including a video Cheat Sheet and Book Beast.[11] The site frequently creates encyclopedic landing pages on topical subjects such as President Obama's inauguration, the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, Michael Jackson, the Iran uprising, and the US Open.[12] In 2014, The Daily Beast became majority mobile and released an iOS app, which Nieman Lab described as "the dawn of the quantified news reader".[13]

Contributors to the publication include notable writers and political activists such as Ana Marie Cox, P. J. O'Rourke, Maajid Nawaz, Olivia Nuzzi, Mike Barnicle, Noah Shachtman, Michael Tomasky, David Frum, Stuart Stevens, Meghan McCain, Peter Beinart, Jon Favreau, Kirsten Powers, Erin Gloria Ryan, Daniel Gross, Michael Moynihan, Jamelle Bouie, Lloyd Grove, Daniel Klaidman, Jackie Kucinich, Christopher Dickey, Leslie H. Gelb, Dean Obeidallah, Matt K. Lewis, Ron Christie, Josh Rogin, Eli Lake, Nick Romeo, Christopher Buckley, Bernard Henri Levy, Eleanor Clift, Patricia Murphy, Michelle Goldberg, Martin Amis, John Avlon, Joshua Dubois, Joy-Ann Reid, Goldie Taylor, Michael Weiss, Jimmy Breslin and others, including Brown herself. In May 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman left the Guardian and joined The Daily Beast.[14][15][16][17] When asked about the move Ackerman said, "The Daily Beast is the place to do the kind of journalism that matters most right now..."[18] In June 2017 Huffington Post Senior Political Editor Sam Stein announced he is joining The Daily Beast in the same capacity.[19]

Popularity

In early June 2014, Capital New York re-published a memo by outgoing CEO Rhona Murphy, stating that The Daily Beast's average unique monthly visitors increased from 13.5 million in 2013 to more than 17 million in 2014.[20]

By September 2014 the website reached a new record of 21 million unique visitors; it was a 60% year-over-year increase in readers, accompanied by a 300% increase in the overall size of its social media community.[21]

In 2015, Ken Doctor, a news analyst for Nieman Lab, reported on Capital New York that The Daily Beast is "one of the fastest-growing news and information sites year-over-year in the 'General News' category".[22]

Editor-in-Chief John Avlon announced in his column at the end of 2016 that they had doubled their traffic from four years before and reached more than one million readers a day.[23]

Awards

The Daily Beast won a Webby Award for "Best News Site" in 2012 and 2013.[24] Also in 2012 John Avlon won National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ award for best online column in 2012 for The Daily Beast.[25]

Anna Nemstova received the Courage in Journalism Award in 2015 from the International Women's Media Foundation.[26] Also that year, Michael Daly won with the National Society of Newspaper Columnists award in the category of Online, Blog, Multimedia – Over 100,000 Unique Visitors.[27]

In 2016 The Los Angeles Press Club nominated several of The Beast’s writers including M.L. Nestel for Arts/Entertainment Investigative, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins for best Celebrity Investigative, Malcolm Jones for best Obituary, Lizzie Crocker for Humor and Tim Teeman for Industry/ArtsHard News. Also nominated for best in field were Kevin Fallon for Industry/Arts Soft News and Melissa Leon for Industry/Arts Soft News.[28]

The Association of LGBTQ Journalists or NLGJA nominated both Tim Teeman 2016 Journalist of the Year and Heather Boerner Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage.[29]

In 2017 the website won three New York Press Club Journalism Awards in the internet publishing categories of Entertainment News, Crime Reporting and Travel Reporting.[30]

Beast Books

In September 2009, The Daily Beast launched a publishing initiative entitled "Beast Books" that will produce books by Beast writers on an accelerated publishing schedule.[31] The first book published by Beast Books was John Avlon’s "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.”[32]

In March 2012, "Beast Books," now operating under the name "Book Beast," won a National Magazine Award for Website Department, which "Honors a department, channel or microsite."[33] In January 2011 they published Stephen L. Carter’s “The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama.”[34]

Controversies

Plagiarism

In February 2010, Jack Shafer of Slate.com claimed that the chief investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, Gerald Posner, had plagiarised five sentences from an article published on the Miami Herald. Shafer also discovered that Posner had plagiarized content from a Miami Herald blog, a Miami Herald editorial, Texas Lawyer magazine and a health care journalism blog.[35][36] Posner was subsequently fired from The Daily Beast following an internal review.[37]

Merger

On 12 November 2010, The Daily Beast and Newsweek announced a merger deal, creating a combined company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. On 3 August 2013, IAC, owner of The Daily Beast, sold Newsweek (without "The Daily Beast") to IBT Media, owner of the International Business Times.[38] In September 2014, one year after Tina Brown's departure was announced, The Daily Beast reached a new record of 21 million unique visitors—a 60% year-over-year increase in readers, accompanied by a 300% increase in the overall size of its social media community.[39]

Nico Hine's 2016 Olympics Grindr article

On 11 August 2016, The Daily Beast published an article titled "I Got Three Grindr Dates in an Hour in the Olympic Village",[40] written by Nico Hines, the site's London editor, who was assigned to cover the Olympic Games.[41] Hines, a straight married man, signed up for several gay and straight dating apps, including Tinder, Bumble and Grindr, and documented his experiences in the Olympic Village. While not specifically naming names, Hines provided enough detail in the article to identify individual athletes, leading to widespread criticism that this information could be used against closeted gay athletes, especially those living in repressive countries.[42] Facing intense backlash online,[43][44][45][46] The Daily Beast edited the piece to remove details that could allow athletes to be identified, and editor in chief John Avlon added a lengthy editor's note. Criticism challenging the value of the piece continued,[47] and The Daily Beast eventually removed the article altogether and issued an apology.[48]

Andrew M Seaman, ethics committee chair for the Society of Professional Journalists, called the article "journalistic trash, unethical and dangerous".[49] The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association stated "The reporting was unethical, extremely careless of individual privacy and potentially dangerous to the athletes".[50] Vince Gonzales, professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism wrote "I think this borders on journalistic malpractice".[50] President of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, wrote "How this reporter thought it was OK—or that somehow it was in the public's interest—to write about his deceitful encounters with these men reflects a complete lack of judgment and disregard for basic decency, not to mention the ethics of journalism".[50]

False accusations of Trump support

On 15 August 2016, The Daily Beast published an article by James Kirchick which listed Corey Robin, Glenn Greenwald, Ishaan Tharoor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and others as "Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left".[51] Salon's Ben Norton contacted the people mentioned in the article, all of whom except for one stated they did not support Trump. Jeet Heer, a senior editor at The New Republic, tweeted "Um, none of the people are Trump admirers."[52] Scholar of Russian studies Stephen Cohen accused Kirchick of using "McCarthy-like slurs" in order "to shut off any substantial debate about foreign policy".[53] Journalist Rania Khalek added: "The suggestion that I harbor admiration for Trump is an incredible smear ... Trump is an unhinged and dangerous demagogue who is whipping up fascist sentiments that should concern us all."[53] Christopher Ketcham, who was the exception, stated he supported Trump because he felt his ethics and behavior most closely represented the United States' true values.[53] Kirchick, who has been referred to as a "Clinton-supporting neoconservative",[53] spoke of her as "the candidate of the status quo" and "2016's real conservative".[53][54]

References

  1. ↑ The 60-second interview: John Avlon, editor in chief, The Daily Beast 12 February 2015, Capital New York
  2. ↑ "Tina Brown steps down after tumultuous tenure at Daily Beast" 11 September 2013, The Guardian
  3. ↑ "John Avlon - IAC Profile". iac.com. IAC. Retrieved 26 June 2017. John Avlon is Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Beast.
  4. ↑ "Daily Beast promotes Avlon to editor-in-chief" 17 January 2014, New York Post
  5. ↑ Gold, Hadas (3 March 2017). "Daily Beast president leaving to join Intel". Politico.com. Politico Media. Retrieved 7 June 2017. Daily Beast President and Publisher Mike Dyer is leaving the company for a new position at technology firm Intel, he announced to staff on Friday.
  6. ↑ "The Daily Beast Appoints Heather Dietrick As President and Publisher". iac.com. IAC. 18 May 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2017. Today, The Daily Beast announced the appointment of Heather Dietrick as President and Publisher, where she will oversee all company operations with an emphasis on growing The Daily Beast's journalistic influence and building out new revenue streams.
  7. ↑ "Tina Brown Resurrects Waugh's 'Daily Beast'" 7 August 2008 New York
  8. ↑ Rothstein, Betsy (17 March 2015). "Betsy Woodruff To The Daily Beast". The Daily Caller. Retrieved 23 May 2017. In another signal that John Avlon is trying to soften the image that The Daily Beast is another liberal media outlet, they’ve hired Betsy Woodruff from Slate.
  9. ↑ Barr, Jeremy (10 November 2016). "The Daily Beast Joins 'The Loyal Opposition.' Is That Good for Business?". Advertising Age. Crain Communications. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  10. ↑ Mullin, Benjamin (April 24, 2017). "Why The Daily Beast doesn't publish Trump stories on Sunday mornings". Poynter Institute. Retrieved July 8, 2017. Our commitment is to be nonpartisan but not neutral...We're going to hit both sides where appropriate. We're not going to toe any partisan line. We're going to have a range of columnists, from liberal to libertarian. But we're also not going to pretend there's a mythic moral equivalence between candidates or on any given issue. For me, the key quote for our times is actually an older quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said that everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
  11. ↑ "Tina Brown Talks About the Book Beast". Mediabistro.com. 6 February 2009. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
  12. ↑ "U.S. Open". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 4 March 2010.
  13. ↑ The Newsonomics of the Newly Quantified, Gamified News Reader Nieman Lab 4 December 2014
  14. ↑ "Spencer Ackerman Profile - The Guardian". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 June 2017. Spencer Ackerman was the national security editor for Guardian US. Ackerman was part of the Guardian team that won the 2014 Pulitzer prize for public service journalism. A former senior writer for Wired, he won the 2012 National Magazine Award for digital reporting.
  15. ↑ "Guardian and Washington Post win Pulitzer prize for NSA revelations". theguardian.com. The Guardian. 14 April 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2017. Others on the team of journalists included Spencer Ackerman, James Ball, David Blishen, Gabriel Dance, Julian Borger, Nick Davies, David Leigh and Dominic Rushe. In Australia the editor was Katharine Viner and the reporter Lenore Taylor.
  16. ↑ Research, Cision Media (10 May 2017). "Daily Beast Nabs Spencer Ackerman". cision.com. Cision Media. Retrieved 1 June 2017. After several years as U.S. national security editor at The Guardian, Spencer Ackerman will join The Daily Beast as senior national security correspondent.
  17. ↑ Pompeo, Joe (9 May 2017). "Now we know who Spencer Ackerman left The Guardian for". Politico.com. Politico. Retrieved 1 June 2017. The Daily Beast as a senior national security correspondent, 'covering homeland security, counterterrorism, intel and more... and reuniting with his former colleague Noah Schachtman, who's now the Beast's exec editor,' CNN's Brian Stelter reported last night
  18. ↑ Stelter, Brian (7 May 2017). "Spencer Ackerman joining The Daily Beast". cnn.com. Reliable Sources. Retrieved 1 June 2017. Spencer Ackerman, who turned heads when he left Guardian US last week, is moving over to The Daily Beast. He'll be senior national security correspondent for the news organization... covering homeland security, counterterrorism, intel and more... and reuniting with his former colleague Noah Schachtman, who's now the Beast's exec editor. Ackerman says via email: "The Daily Beast is the place to do the kind of journalism that matters most right now..."
  19. ↑ Wemple, Erik (19 June 2017). "HuffPost’s Sam Stein leaving for the Daily Beast". washingpost.com. The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 June 2017. Days after HuffPost announced a round of layoffs, one of its longtime voices is making a leap of his own accord: Sam Stein, the site’s senior politics editor, is joining the Daily Beast in a similar capacity. He joins a 10-strong D.C. bureau at the Daily Beast, a site that has made a series of big-name hires in recent weeks, including luring former Guardian reporter Spencer Ackerman and former Gawker Media president Heather Dietrick.
  20. ↑ Pompeo, Joe (4 June 2014). "Leadership changes at The Daily Beast". Capital. Retrieved 4 June 2014.
  21. ↑ Gold, Hadas (1 October 2015). "One year after Tina Brown exit, Daily Beast traffic surges". politico.com. Politico. Retrieved 7 June 2017. In a memo to staff on Wednesday, Editor-in-Chief John Avlon said internal numbers on all platforms showed 21.3 million unique visitors in September, a 60 percent increase in traffic compared to the same month last year. ComScore data for September, which is often lower than internal numbers, is not yet available. "This year alone, we've grown our audience more than 30%, our social media community is up 300%, and our Facebook audience has grown from 320,000 to 1.7 million since last summer. Over the course of 2014, our advertising deal size has increased 30%, with our largest campaigns ever secured in the past quarter.
  22. ↑ Doctor, Ken (February 10, 2015). "What are they thinking? The Daily Beast's Mike Dyer, against wishful thinking". Politico. Politico LLC. Retrieved July 7, 2017. This is what we know from data: It’s one of the fastest-growing news and information sites year-over-year in the “General News” category. With a Comscore growth rate of 52 percent year-over-year, as compared to 31 percent for the top 25 news sites overall, The Daily Beast drives more than 12 million unique visitors a month, surpassing some notable legacy magazines. Its story, though, is more intriguing as we look at three factors underpinning its growth: mobile, millennials and content marketing. Those words now seem commonplace; it’s the particular way The Daily Beast arranges the Legos that distinguishes it.
  23. ↑ "John Avlon, "Our Murrow Moment," 31 December 2016.". The Daily Beast.
  24. ↑ McAthy, Rachel (30 April 2013). "HuffPost Live and NY Times among Webby Award winners". Journalism.co.uk. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  25. ↑ "Column Contest Winners, Going Way Back". National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  26. ↑ "Beast Reporter Wins Courage Award". thedailybeast.com. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  27. ↑ "2015 Column Finalists". National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  28. ↑ "Daily Beast Nominated for 16 Awards". thedailybeast.com. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  29. ↑ "NLGJA Announces 2016 Excellence in Journalism Award Winners and Honorees". nlgja.org. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  30. ↑ "The International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists Wins Gold Keyboard In 2017 New York Press Club Journalism Awards" (PDF). nypressclub.org. The New York Press Club, Inc. May 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2017. Crime Reporting - Internet “The Pickup Artisits” Brandy Zadrozny, The Daily Beast, Entertainment News - Internet "Rose Styron: The Truth About Life With Her Husband, Literary Legend William Styron”, Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast, Travel Writing - Internet, “Penitents, Pedophiles, Poets, Movie Stars, Silversmiths, and Drug Lords”, Phoebe Eaton, The Daily Beast
  31. ↑ O'Shea, Chris (31 August 2013). "Newsweek/The Daily Beast Sets Traffic Record". Media Bistro. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  32. ↑ Brown, Tina (22 January 2010). "Introducing Beast Books". thedailybeast.com. The Daily Beast. Retrieved 7 June 2017. Wingnuts is the first book bearing the imprint of Beast Books.
  33. ↑ "National Magazine Awards For Digital Media 2012 Winners Announced". magazine.org. The Association of Magazine Media. 20 March 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2017. Website Department Honors a department, channel or microsite The Daily Beast, Tina Brown, Editor-in-Chief Newsweek and The Daily Beast, For “Book Beast”
  34. ↑ Traub, James (28 January 2011). "The War Presidents". nytimes.com. The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  35. ↑ "Plagiarism at the Daily Beast: Gerald Posner concedes lifting from the Miami Herald". Slate Magazine. February 2010
  36. ↑ Shafer, Jack (February 2010). "More Posner Plagiarism". Slate. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  37. ↑ Shafer, Jack (11 February 2010). "The Posner Plagiarism Perplex". Slate. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  38. ↑ "IAC Found Someone to Buy Zombie Newsweek". New York. 3 August 2013.
  39. ↑ Hadas Gold (1 October 2014). "One year after Tina Brown exit, Daily Beast traffic surges". Politico.
  40. ↑ Hines, Nico (11 August 2016). "The Other Olympic Sport in Rio: Swiping". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  41. ↑ "Nico Hines". The Daily Beast.
  42. ↑ "Rio 2016: Daily Beast 'sorry for outing gay athletes'". BBC News. 12 August 2016.
  43. ↑ Mic. "Seriously, F*ck That 'Daily Beast' Gay-Baiting, Life-Threatening Olympics Piece". Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  44. ↑ "Everyone's Pissed At This Straight Journalist Who Used Grindr To Out Gay Athletes In Rio". Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  45. ↑ Williams, Mary Elizabeth. "Olympic sex reporting gone wrong: How not to cover the international athlete hook-up scene". Salon. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  46. ↑ Stern, Mark Joseph (11 August 2016). "This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  47. ↑ Lopez, German (11 August 2016). "The Daily Beast tried to prove Olympians like sex, but instead may have outed gay athletes". Vox.
  48. ↑ "A Note From the Editors". The Daily Beast. 12 August 2016.
  49. ↑ Guarino, Ben (12 August 2016). "'Trash, unethical and dangerous': Daily Beast lambasted for Olympic dating article". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
  50. 1 2 3 Maltais, Michelle (12 August 2016). "Bad form at the Olympics in Daily Beast's Grindr-baiting story". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
  51. ↑ Kirchick, James (15 August 2016). "Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
  52. ↑ Heer, Jeet (HeerJeet). "Um, none of the people are Trump admirers." 15 August 2016, 13:33 UTC. Tweet
  53. 1 2 3 4 5 Norton, Ben (17 August 2016). "No, they don’t support Trump: Smeared left-wing writers debunk the myth". Salon.
  54. ↑ Norton, Ben. "Another neocon endorses Clinton, calling her “2016’s real conservative” and “the candidate of the status quo”". Salon.
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