The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast
| News | |
| Available in | English |
| Owner | IAC |
| Created by | Tina Brown |
| Editor | Noah Shachtman |
| Website | |
| Alexarank | |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | None |
| Launched | October 6, 2008 |
| Current status | Active |
The Daily Beast is an American news and opinion website focused on politics and pop culture. In a 2015 interview, former Editor-in-chief John Avlon described The Beast's editorial approach: "We seek out scoops, scandals, and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots, and hypocrites." In 2018, Avlon described the Beast's "Strike Zone" as "politics, pop culture and power".[1]
| News | |
| Available in | English |
| Owner | IAC |
| Created by | Tina Brown |
| Editor | Noah Shachtman |
| Website | |
| Alexarank | |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | None |
| Launched | October 6, 2008 |
| Current status | Active |
History
The Daily Beast began publishing on October 6, 2008. The Beast's founding editor was Tina Brown, a former editor of Vanity Fair*]]nd The New Yorker s well as the short-lived Talk magazine. Brown stepped down as editor in September 2013.[2] John Avlon, an American journalist and political commentator as well as a CNN contributor, was the site's editor-in-chief and managing director from 2013 to 2018.[3][4][5] The name of the site was taken from a fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop.[6]
In 2010, The Daily Beast merged with the magazine Newsweek creating a combined company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. The merger ended in 2013, when Daily Beast owner IAC sold Newsweek to IBT Media, owner of the International Business Times.[7]
In September 2014, The Daily Beast reached a new record of 21 million unique visitors—a 60% year-over-year increase in readers, accompanied by a 300% increase in the overall size of its social media community.[8]
In May 2018 Avlon departed from the Beast to become full-time Senior Political Analyst and anchor at CNN. Avlon was succeeded by executive editor Noah Shachtman.[9]
Editorial stance
In an April 2018 interview, Avlon described the publication's political stance as "nonpartisan but not neutral": "what that means is we're going to hit both sides where appropriate, but we're not going for mythic moral equivalence on every issue."[1] In April 2017 Avlon discussed the organization's approach on the Poynter Institute's podcast saying, "We're not going to toe any partisan line."[13] In December 2017, NPR reported about The Daily Beast's bipartisan approach to its political reporting. Editor-in-Chief John Avlon began pairing reporters from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum to cover stories on the White House. In particular, they are using both Asawin Suebsaeng (formerly of Mother Jones) and Lachlan Markay (formerly of the Heritage Foundation) to file stories on the Trump Administration. Avlon commented about the approach saying, "We're nonpartisan, but not neutral. And so bringing these two perspectives together, I think, helps us stand out from the pack."[14]
Executive Editor Noah Shachtman describes the editorial style as "some of the spirit of the old school New York tabloid and match it with the pace of digital journalism."
Shachtman continues, "What we did is really put an emphasis on scoop, scoop, scoop...
That has really combined for what I think is the best read on the net."[1]
The Washington Post media Critic Erik Wemple described the Beast's direction, "Pound for pound, it is an impressive operation. As I see it, they do a few things well: they bang the phones, they don't always follow the same story everyone else is doing and they are fast."[1]
The illustrational style created by Director of Photography Sarah Rogers and used at the top of every article has been described as, "jaunty collage and pop-art illustrations".[1]
Format
A feature of The Daily Beast is the "Cheat Sheet", billed as "must reads from all over". Published throughout the day, 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.
After the launch, the site introduced additional sections, including a video Cheat Sheet and Book Beast.[18] The site frequently creates encyclopedic landing pages on topical subjects such as President Obama's inauguration, the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, and the Iran uprising.[19] In 2014, The Daily Beast became majority mobile and released an iOS app, which Nieman Lab described as "the dawn of the quantified news reader".[20]
Contributors
Contributors to the publication include notable writers and political activists such as:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Martin Amis
John Avlon
Mike Barnicle
Peter Beinart
Jamelle Bouie
Jimmy Breslin
Tina Brown
Christopher Buckley
Gordon Chang
Ron Christie
Eleanor Clift
Ana Marie Cox
Christopher Dickey
Diane Dimond
Kim Dozier
Joshua Dubois
Mark Ebner
Jon Favreau
Leslie H. Gelb
Daniel Gross
Lloyd Grove
Shane Harris
Kyleanne Hunter[21]
Daniel Klaidman
Jackie Kucinich
Eli Lake
Bernard Henri Levy
Matt K. Lewis
Ira Madison III
Meghan McCain
Mark McKinnon
Michael Moynihan
Patricia Murphy
Maajid Nawaz
Olivia Nuzzi
Dean Obeidallah
P. J. O'Rourke
Kirsten Powers
Josh Rogin
Nick Romeo
Erin Gloria Ryan
Noah Shachtman
Mimi Sheraton[22]
Harry Siegel
Stuart Stevens
Goldie Taylor
Michael Tomasky
Touré
Michael Weiss
Rick Wilson
In June 2017, Huffington Post senior political editor Sam Stein announced he was joining The Daily Beast in the same capacity.[28]
Reach
In early June 2014, Capital New York re-published a memo by outgoing CEO Rhona Murphy, stating that The Daily Beast's average unique monthly visitors increased from 13.5 million in 2013 to more than 17 million in 2014.[29] By September 2014, the website reached a new record of 21 million unique visitors; it was a 60% year-over-year increase in readers, accompanied by a 300% increase in the overall size of its social media community.[30]
In 2015, Ken Doctor, a news analyst for Nieman Lab, reported that The Daily Beast is "one of the fastest-growing news and information sites year-over-year in the 'General News' category".[31]
In a 2017 interview, actor George Clooney complimented the organization's development stating, "I really do love what you guys are doing over there, you've stepped up the game considerably from when it started, and it's fun to watch."[34]
Awards
In March 2012, "Book Beast" won a National Magazine Award for Website Department, which "honors a department, channel or microsite".[37]
In 2016, the Los Angeles Press Club nominated several of The Beast's writers including M. L. Nestel for Arts/Entertainment Investigative, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins for best Celebrity Investigative, Malcolm Jones for best Obituary, Lizzie Crocker for Humor and Tim Teeman for Industry/ArtsHard News. Also nominated for best in field were Kevin Fallon for Industry/Arts Soft News and Melissa Leon for Industry/Arts Soft News.[40]
In 2017, the website won three New York Press Club Journalism Awards in the internet publishing categories of Entertainment News, Crime Reporting and Travel Reporting.[43] In December, the Los Angeles Press Club's National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards announced the platform had won 4 awards for 2017 reporting including investigative articles about the Nate Parker rape case, comic Bob Smith's struggle with ALS, and remembering Bill Paxton.[44]
In 2018, the trade magazine Digiday awarded the Beast's Cheet Sheet for best email newsletter.[45]
Beast Books
Controversies
Plagiarism
In February 2010, Jack Shafer of Slate magazine claimed that the chief investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, Gerald Posner, had plagiarised five sentences from an article published by the Miami Herald. Shafer also discovered that Posner had plagiarized content from a Miami Herald blog, a Miami Herald editorial, Texas Lawyer magazine and a health care journalism blog.[51][52] Posner was subsequently dismissed from The Daily Beast following an internal review.[53]
Taliban denouncement
Nico Hines' 2016 Olympics article
On August 11, 2016, The Daily Beast published an article titled "I Got Three Grindr Dates in an Hour in the Olympic Village", written by Nico Hines, the site's London editor, who was assigned to cover the Olympic Games.[56][57] Hines, a heterosexual married man, signed up for several gay and straight dating apps, including Tinder, Bumble and Grindr, and documented his experiences in the Olympic Village. While not specifically naming names, Hines provided enough detail in the article to identify individual athletes, leading to widespread criticism that this information could be used against closeted gay athletes, especially those living in repressive countries.[58] Facing intense backlash online,[59][60][61][62] The Daily Beast edited the piece to remove details that could allow athletes to be identified, and editor in chief John Avlon added a lengthy editor's note. Criticism challenging the value of the piece continued,[63] and The Daily Beast eventually removed the article altogether and issued an apology.[64] In March 2017, Hines issued a formal apology for his actions, and it was announced by the website's editor Hines would be returning to The Daily Beast "following a lengthy period of intense reflection".[57][65]
Andrew M. Seaman, ethics committee chair for the Society of Professional Journalists, called the article "journalistic trash, unethical and dangerous".[66] The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association stated "The reporting was unethical, extremely careless of individual privacy and potentially dangerous to the athletes".[67] Vince Gonzales, professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism wrote "I think this borders on journalistic malpractice".[67] The president of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, wrote "How this reporter thought it was OK—or that somehow it was in the public's interest—to write about his deceitful encounters with these men reflects a complete lack of judgment and disregard for basic decency, not to mention the ethics of journalism".[67]
Doxing
In June 2019, The Daily Beast reporter Kevin Poulsen was accused of doxing Shawn Brooks, a 34-year-old Trump supporter living in the Bronx, when Poulsen revealed his identity in an article published on June 1, 2019 for being the alleged creator and disseminator of a fake video, which showed Nancy Pelosi speaking in a slurred manner.[68][69][70] Hours after being posted on May 22, 2019, the fake video had been shared over 60,000 times on Facebook and had more than 4 million views.[69][71] The fake video also spread to Twitter and YouTube, but was taken down on YouTube after the video was shown to be fake.[71] As of June 4, 2019, the fake video on Facebook had been removed.[72]
The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald criticized The Daily Beast for revealing Brooks' identity, saying on Twitter it was "repellent to unleash the resources of a major news outlet on an obscure, anonymous, powerless, quasi-unemployed citizen for the crime of trivially mocking the most powerful political leaders".[69][70] Huffington Post and New York contributor Yashar Ali also criticized The Daily Beast for revealing Brooks' identity, saying it "sets a really bad precedent when a private citizen has their identity publicly revealed simply because they made a video of a politician appearing to be drunk".[68][69] The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro said on Laura Ingraham's The Ingraham Angle on June 3 that "My impression was that if you are posting anonymously on Facebook, then it's not really within Facebook's purvey to start handing that information to media outlets, but I guess that isn't true".[73]
Other journalists who criticized The Daily Beast include freelance journalist and former The Young Turks journalist Michael Tracey, who said on Twitter that "No one on the planet ever thought "disinformation is the purview of Russia alone" other than self-aggrandizing, sleazy, click-chasing Daily Beast journalists", and media editor for TheWrap Jon Levine, who called the article a "hit job over a joke video that happened to go viral".[69][70]
When The Daily Beast editor Noah Shachtman was asked about these criticisms by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter on his "Reliable Sources" show on June 2, 2019, Shachtman defended the article, noting that the fake video had reached "the highest levels of power, with Rudy Giuliani himself tweeting it out" and therefore, according to Shachtman, it was worth identifying the creator of the fake video.[69]
In response, Shawn Brooks denied creating the fake video, despite admitting to being one of the administrators of the group Politics WatchDog who had originally posted the video and blamed a "female admin" of the group.[68][70][71] Brooks said that he would sue The Daily Beast and Poulsen for publishing "inaccurate trash", and created a GoFundMe page to raise money for legal costs, with a goal of raising $10,000.[70][71] As of the morning of June 3, 2019, he had raised more than $4,400.[70]