Can JoCo Tame the Daily Beast?
The uneasy marriage of a magazine legend and a scoop machine. By Justin Miller/Deputy Editor, Intelligencer
Editor’s note: For more on Joanna Coles, listen to Episode 21 of Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!).
The Daily Beast had another scoop. On her first week on the job as chief creative and content officer, Joanna Coles carried a tip into the newsroom: A friend told her that Barron Trump would attend NYU for college. She told a group of staff to write it up for a new gossip column she wanted, called “Beast Buzz.”
After trying to confirm the story, the team came up empty, but Coles pressed them to publish. The task fell to Tracy Connor, the editor-in-chief who eschews her office for a simple desk among reporters and editors. As she wrote up the blind item without a byline, Coles said in a voice loud enough for all to hear: “We will see how it does. Let’s hope it’s true!”
Brought on to revitalize the publication, the former editor of Cosmopolitan is busy remaking The Beast in her own image: buzzy, glitzy, and unafraid of controversy. “I’m going to blow it up,” she said this past weekend at the White House Correspondents Dinner, where she was hunting for talent. “We’re going to be pirates.”
Already, though, she is clashing with the hard-news scoop machine she is trying to operate, according to multiple staff members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect them from retaliation for speaking out. By the end of her first week, at least a dozen staff were looking elsewhere for jobs or hoping for buyouts, and by the end of her second, two were on the way out. For those who remain, fear of layoffs is widespread and morale is so low that some have been crying behind closed doors.
“I’m going to blow it up. We’re going to be pirates.”
The speed of the takeover caused whiplash. On Monday morning, April 15, Barry Diller’s IAC announced a partnership with Coles and Ben Sherwood: IAC would retain a majority stake while the two media veterans bought the rest for an undisclosed amount and were made salaried employees. Coles was placed in charge of the Beast’s editorial operations and Sherwood, the former chief of Disney and ABC’s combined television units, was made chief executive and publisher.
“These are tough times for digital journalism, but the combined experience, expertise and energy of Ben and Joanna have made me an optimist about their ability to make the Beast an enduring and successful enterprise,” Diller said in a statement. (A spokesperson told me IAC is investing in The Beast for its next chapter.) A knowledgable observer agrees, saying “they will be great for the Beast in the long run if they don’t fuck up the transition.”
That afternoon, the staff rushed to IAC’s headquarters, a swooping, Frank Gehry building overlooking the Hudson. It was the fullest the office had been since before the pandemic. Just after 2pm, Coles snatched a microphone and breezed through her considerable résumé before announcing two new jobs that would show what sort of stories she wanted to prioritize. Effective immediately, she would hire a Chief Lauren Sanchez Correspondent and a Chief Fruits and Vegetables Correspondent, based in Montecito, California, to cover Meghan Markle’s American Riviera Orchard, which she was “completely obsessed” with. (The Beast would later publish six stories on Markle’s jam in as many days.)
“They were coming in here to install some warped vision of the Daily Beast that is not what we do,” said a Daily Beast staffer of several years. “Her version of news is trend pieces and listicles.” Sherwood followed up by telling the staff, which totals about 100 including the business side, that they would work harder than ever. “On their first day, they delivered their speech and they lost the newsroom almost immediately,” the staffer continued.
By the end of the meeting, where the editor-in-chief was seated in the crowd and did not speak, the staff had only a vague notion of what their bosses would do or who was even in charge. “If I survive and stay, do I work for the editor-in-chief or Joanna?” one staffer said. “Everyone who grew up in a newsroom is confused by what a creative director does.”
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Continue reading at New York magazine.
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON 02 MAY 2024 ©VOX MEDIA LLC