The Daily Beast Merges With Newsweek, Creating "BeastWeek"

The Daily Beast, the news site ran by Tina Brown (Businessinsider.com photo at left) and with a staff this blogger pointed to as devoid of blacks when the website was established in 2008, is completing a merger with Howard Fineman's old media home Newsweek.  

When it's completed, this blogger will call it BeastWeek.

According to The New York Observer, Brown, the web and editorial staffs will merge, and Brown will be in charge of the combined tribe.  The merger itself will be a 50-50 ownership split.  Reportedly, Newsweek owner Sidney Harman and IAC Chairman Barry Diller could not agree on an operating system for BeastWeek, but have worked through their differences and are close to something they can agree on.  (Really, they should have spent more time on a New Media business plan, but I digress.)

Newsweek and The Daily Beast are both just not performing well, so without a sound plan and financial backing, it's not likely BeastWeek will fair much better.   It's not enough to merge two media organizations, but roll the dice and create a new way of distributing media in a cost effective yet impactive way.

The model Harman and Diller should copy for BeastWeek is Associated Content or The Examiner, and with an eye toward eventual acquisition by a large web organization like AOL.  But BeastWeek has to form itself into a must-be-at product (note that), and even with the sure-fire combination of Megan McCain's sexy intellect, nothing short of a complete overhaul of the media delivery system between Newsweek and The Daily Beast will really turn things around.

BeastWeek.  Because it will either grow to a beast of an organization that devoirs the week in news, or be the dying media beast spending weeks on life support.

Time will tell.