Myra Breckenridge Reports!
Nov 03, 2024
Can Joanna Coles and Ben Sherwood revive the once-buzzy news site and reclaim their perches atop the New York media world? Their own staff isn’t sure.
Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles took over leadership of The Daily Beast in April with the task of turning the money-losing site around. Credit…Gili Benita for The New York Times
On a sunny morning in early October, Joanna Coles, clad in a stylish tomato-red coat, and Ben Sherwood, dressed more demurely in a corduroy jacket, convened at their regular breakfast spot, the no-frills Star on 18 diner on Manhattan’s Far West Side.
The two veteran media executives were talking about their ambitious plans for The Daily Beast, the 16-year-old money-losing news website, in which they jointly acquired a minority stake in April.
But along with the predictable optimism about the mission they are taking on and enthusiasm about early signs of audience uptick and subscriber growth, Ms. Coles, a former chief content officer of Hearst Magazines, and Mr. Sherwood, a onetime president of ABC News and Disney TV chief, also conveyed a sense of frustration.
Frustration that they weren’t greeted by the staff they inherited as warmly as they expected. Frustration that the site’s tech problems meant they’ve had to buy multiple subscriptions just to log in. Frustration that convincing the newsroom of their editorial vision has been an uphill climb.
Less than three weeks after the pair’s takeover, New York magazine published a detailed report on the friction between reporters and Ms. Coles over story suggestions that they deemed ridiculous, including an investigation into whether former President Donald J. Trump was having stress-induced flatulence during his criminal trial and a list of the most obese members of Congress. (Neither article ran.)
It was clear that many of the sources for the report were inside the organization, with one unnamed staff member bluntly criticizing the new owners’ “warped vision” of the news site.
“This thing came within a day of being sold to the private equity knacker’s yard, where it would have been stripped,” Ms. Coles said later in an interview at The Beast’s offices in Chelsea, using a British term for a slaughterhouse. “In what way is it helpful to tape our conversations and to proudly boast that you are not going to even attempt to look at the stories that your new bosses are asking you to look at?”
“To me, that’s just, like, ‘No wonder the place is going out of business,’” she added.
For his part, Mr. Sherwood was aghast that Beast journalists had anonymously complained about a Daily Beast article on plans by Barron Trump, Mr. Trump’s youngest son, to attend New York University. The article relied on a source of Ms. Coles and was published without a byline.
“That happens to be something that she knew stone cold — her source was solid,” Mr. Sherwood said. “The organization went into a convulsion over this because Joanna did not reveal her source and no one could stand this up with any of their sources.”
Myra: while WWIII simmers, under the hand of The Netanyahu, backed by senile Old Joe, a bought and paid for House and Senate, and a complicit Corporate Media, Katie Robertson provides an amuse-bouche, for those Sunday morning readers of The Paper of Record!
Sincerely yours,
Myra Breckenridge
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