The Daily Beast has long been an outlier in billionaire Barry Diller's digital empire. While sites like Match.com and his Expedia have made huge profits over the years, Mr. Diller's digital tabloid has published scoop after scoop, losing money and losing profits. I was having trouble raising it.
Now, Diller is making a big push to change that, bringing on Ben Sherwood, former president of Disney's ABC Television Group, and Joanna Coles, former chief content officer of Hearst Magazines, to help.
Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Coles will be given a stake equal to about half of The Daily Beast, with IAC retaining a majority stake, the people said. This allows you to participate in the financial success of your website if you can grow your website's business. Each will be paid a salary. Mr. Sherwood, 60, will become chief executive officer and publisher, and Mr. Coles, 61, will become chief creative and content officer.
IAC did not disclose details of specific financial terms.
The decision to bring on Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Coles came after Mr. Diller considered selling The Daily Beast and spoke with various suitors. There was a potential deal with Janice Min, founder of Hollywood newsletter company Ankler Media and former top editor of The Hollywood Reporter, but that fell through.
“When Ben and Joanna made this presentation, I was actually starting to doubt that anything other than sales would work,” Diller said. “But I was very impressed with their concept, energy and interest.”
Sherwood said the Daily Beast's revitalization plan will take inspiration from other publications that generate revenue through a combination of subscriptions, advertising and events. Mr. Sherwood, who was also president of ABC News, said that after starting and selling another business called Mojo, he was drawn back to journalism, where he felt he could make the greatest contribution.
“The first and most important part is to go in there, evaluate, observe, and then figure out how we make great things and how we make people feel that The Daily Beast is a sinful necessity. “It's about starting to have an impact on people,” he said. Mr. Sherwood said.
Coles and Sherwood were in talks to partner on a digital media venture called Project Scoop in 2019, but put that on the back burner to pursue other interests. So when Mr. Diller's bankers reached out earlier this year, they already had a shared vision of what the Daily Beast edition would look like and approached Mr. Diller about a partnership.
“The Beast has always punched above its weight,” Coles said. “I’m excited to have a platform where I can point out people’s hypocrisy in public, highlight the people who are doing bad things, and dig into the very revealing details of people’s surroundings.”
Sherwood and Coles said it was the perfect time to return to the news industry. The upcoming presidential election, combined with the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump and the turmoil in the Middle East, underscores the importance of trustworthy news, they said.
Pack previously reported that Sherwood and Coles were in talks to join Beast.
Founded in 2008 by former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown with support from IAC, The Daily Beast publishes a disproportionate number of exclusive stories on media, politics and national security with a relatively small staff. It gained a reputation for this. We currently have approximately 100 staff members.
But the publisher's business never caught up with its journalistic success. His 2010 merger with Newsweek, which aimed to combine the prestige of a storied news magazine with the digital technology of a start-up, didn't last. Mr. Diller sold Newsweek to International Business Times in 2013.
Despite these struggles, Diller remains optimistic about the online news business of publishing original journalism.
“When something is behind a paywall, it's a pretty high bar to get people to actually pay for something,” Diller said. “But guess what? It's happening everywhere.”