Not to be confused with The Beast (newspaper)

The Beast (newspaper)

The Beast was originally a Buffalo, New York alternative biweekly newspaper which now publishes exclusively online.The Beast was founded by Matt Taibbi, Kevin McElwee and Paul Fallon in 2002. The format was originally a free biweekly newspaper, but changed in 2007 when it began to charge for...

.

The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown

Tina Brown

Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...

, former editor of Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (magazine)

Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

 and The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

 as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine

Talk (magazine)

Talk was an American magazine published from 1999 to 2001.When it was launched as a joint venture between Miramax and Hearst Publishing, under the editorship of Tina Brown , it generated notoriety for its celebrity profiles and interviews...

. The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC

IAC/InterActiveCorp

InterActiveCorp is an American internet company with over 50 brands across 40 countries headquartered in New York City...

. Edward Felsenthal, a former Wall Street Journal editor, is the site's executive editor, and Stephen Colvin is its president.

The name of the site is derived from that of the fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

's novel Scoop

Scoop (novel)

Scoop is a 1938 novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, a satire of sensationalist journalism and foreign correspondence.-Plot:William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London, is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Beast, a national newspaper...

.

On November 12, 2010, The Daily Beast and Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

 announced a merger deal, creating a combined company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company

The Newsweek Daily Beast Company

The Newsweek Daily Beast Company is an American media company, and owner of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. It was established in 2010 as a merger between the two media outlets. The company is owned by IAC and Sidney Harman, with Stephen Colvin of The Daily Beast as CEO.-History:Newsweek magazine was...

.

Format

One of the features of The Daily Beast is the "Cheat Sheet", billed as "must reads from all over". Published daily, 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 launch, the site has introduced additional sections, including a video "Cheat Sheet", "Book Beast", "Hungry Beast", and "Sexy Beast", a Fashion and Entertainment section. The site frequently creates encyclopedic landing pages on topical subjects such as President Obama's inauguration

Inauguration of Barack Obama

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D.C., marked the commencement of the four-year term of Barack Obama as President and Joe...

, the Bernard Madoff

Bernard Madoff

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier. He is the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S...

 Ponzi scheme

Ponzi scheme

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation...

, Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...

, the Iran uprising, and the US Open.

The Daily Beast contributors include: Christopher Buckley, Scott Turow

Scott Turow

Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...

, Mark McKinnon

Mark McKinnon

Mark McKinnon is a Republican political advisor in the United States, Global Vice-Chairman of Hill & Knowlton, Inc., a leading international communications consultancy, providing services to local, multinational and global clients, and the President of Maverick Media. Originally a Democrat,...

, Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as a media...

, Matthew Yglesias, Meghan McCain

Meghan McCain

Meghan Marguerite McCain is an American columnist, author, and blogger. She is a daughter of U.S. Senator John McCain and Cindy Hensley McCain. McCain first received media attention in 2007 for her blog, McCain Blogette, on which she documented life on the campaign trail and mused about...

, Reihan Salam

Reihan Salam

Reihan Morshed Salam is an American non-fiction writer and policy analyst. He is a columnist for The Daily and lead writer of National Reviews "The Agenda" blog, as well as a policy adviser at e21 and a contributing editor at National Affairs...

, Tony Blair

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

, Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...

, Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist and author of several books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK which explores the John F...

, Simon Schama

Simon Schama

Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...

, Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...

, Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast...

, Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto born, Fatima Murtaza Bhutto on 29 May 1982, is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is granddaughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and daughter of Murtaza Bhutto....

, Kirsten Powers

Kirsten Powers

Kirsten A. Powers is an American columnist, blogger, pundit, and political commentator. Powers is a Democratic political analyst on Fox News who appears regularly on shows such as The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Sunday, Special Report with Bret Baier and Freedom Watch...

, Howard Kurtz

Howard Kurtz

Howard "Howie" Alan Kurtz is an American journalist and author with a special focus on the media. He is host of CNN's Reliable Sources program, and Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast. He is the former media writer for The Washington Post. He has written five books about the media...

, Judith Miller

Judith Miller (journalist)

Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...

, Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Michael Sullivan is an English author, editor, political commentator and blogger. He describes himself as a political conservative. He has focused on American political life....

, Michael Tomasky

Michael Tomasky

Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.-Biography:Tomasky was born...

 and others, including Brown herself.

Popularity

According to a The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 article, The Daily Beast had reached three million unique visitors per month as of September 28, 2009.

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.

Merger with Newsweek

Tina Brown, The Daily Beasts editor, confirmed in November 2010 that the website would merge with Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, following extensive negotiations between the publications' proprietors.
The new company will be The Newsweek Daily Beast Company

The Newsweek Daily Beast Company

The Newsweek Daily Beast Company is an American media company, and owner of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. It was established in 2010 as a merger between the two media outlets. The company is owned by IAC and Sidney Harman, with Stephen Colvin of The Daily Beast as CEO.-History:Newsweek magazine was...

.

Controversies

In February 2010, Jack Shafer

Jack Shafer

Jack Shafer covers media for Reuters.com Opinion section. Prior to joining Reuters, he edited and wrote the column Press Box for Slate, an online magazine. Before his stay at Slate, Shafer edited two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly...

 of Slate.com

Slate (magazine)

Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

 claimed that the chief investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist and author of several books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK which explores the John F...

, had lifted five sentences from a Miami Herald article and claimed that he had written them himself and was able to publish them in The Daily Beast under his own name. Shafer also discovered that Posner had written plagiarized content from a Miami Herald blog, a Miami Herald editorial, Texas Lawyer magazine and a health care journalism blog. An immediate internal investigation by The Daily Beast led to Posner's departure.

The Daily Beast has released several university rankings, which have received criticism for unscientific data and analysis. In 2010 they released a ranking of the "50 Druggiest Colleges" citing data from College Prowler, a web site that allows open posting by users.

External links

• The Daily Beast official website
• The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet
• The Daily Beast on Facebook
• The Daily Beast on Twitter
• Video: PSFK Conference NYC: New York New Media PSFK, May 7, 2009 – Edward Felsenthal at the PSFK Conference NYC: New York New Media