The cover of the current issue.

Newsweek will no longer be a print magazine, Tina Brown announced in an early-morning blog post. The last print edition will be December 31, 2012.

"In our judgment, we have reached a tipping point at which we can most efficiently and effectively reach our readers in all-digital format," Ms. Brown writes. "This was not the case just two years ago. It will increasingly be the case in the years ahead."

The new all-digital, paid-subscription publication will be called Newsweek Global and be available for tablets and online. Select content will be available on The Daily Beast's website. The Daily Beast, which launched in 2008, merged with Newsweek two years ago.

He hates Manhattan!

Andrew Sullivan has never been shy about expressing his opinion and when it comes to New York—where he's lived for all of two weeks—he's not pulling any punches.

In a Daily Beast post written today—entitled, what else? "New York Shitty"—Mr. Sullivan tells us just how much he hates this horrible city. He hates it a lot. He hates the crowds, he hates his apartment, he hates the internet here and he even hates his cell phone service. Most of all he hates how much he's paying to hate all these things.

"A glance at your bank account shows a giant sucking sound as the city effectively robs you of all your pennies at every juncture. When you're there for a few days or a week, it can be bracing. But living with this as a daily fact of life? How does anyone manage it?"

We've often asked ourselves that same question, but this is coming from a writer who's presumably well paid as one of the prize ponies in The Daily Beast stable?

But worst of all—and this is really unforgivable—Mr. Sullivan compares New York unfavorably to Washington D.C.

Okay, we get it. He just moved. It's hard to adjust to a new city. Washington D.C. has been his home for many years, so it's not like he's making an objective call here. But still.

What does Mr. Sullivan think is wrong with the city besides everything? Well, first off, as a kind of disclaimer, he admits that it was kind of a thrill to be here at first. He loved visiting and the beginning of his residency— his first week? or few days? or day? or hours?—but "after the initial wonderland feel, you get to adjust to a whole new rhythm."

Well, it's been two weeks now and the bloom is definitely off the rose.

For starters, there's the internet, which is so terrible it's surprising that Mr. Sullivan was able to communicate his feelings to us at all. "It's like going back in time," he writes. "We bought the most expensive cable package to expedite my work at home - and it just decides to crawl like dial-up every few minutes. My wifi cannot get a signal that's stable.  My iPhone is suddenly iffy - calls are dropped and online access is far slower than in DC. And if you keep your wifi open, it gets grabbed by squeegee hotspots that are hard to get rid of."

Time Warner cable is also just awful. I mean, it made Patrick Stewart lose his will to live. In Mr. Sullivan's case, he had to live-blog the debate, or "Obama's implosion" as he likes to call it, from the Beast offices.

The Beast offices are, of course, located outside Mr. Sullivan's apartment, which involves a harrowing journey on the city sidewalks. "Just to walk a few blocks requires barging your way through a melee of noise and rudeness and madness."

And it's not like he can escape the misery at his apartment, which is one-fifth the size of his place in DC and has scalding hot water that comes out of the cold faucet. He doesn't even have a good couch where he can curl up in a ball and weep because the store delivered the wrong one.

Clearly Mr. Sullivan is just in a really bad place right now (we mean emotionally), but he swears he's trying to like it here because he has a year-long lease and no choice but to remain in this hell hole the rest of us call home. As inspiration, he's even embedded a video of Alicia Keys singing "Empire State of Mind."

Come on now, Mr. Sullivan, sing along: These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you, let's hear it for New York.

kvelsey@observer.com

In an apparent miscalculation, Newsweek tried to capitalize on their edgy cover by inviting a conversation on Twitter with the suggested hashtag #MuslimRage.

Well, the hashtag caught on, but not for the serious discussion of Middle-Eastern politics and policy that Newsweek no doubt intended. The tweets are mainly borderline offensive jokes and sarcastic references to Muslim culture. However, the tweets are coming fast (and dare we say furiously?), and if even some of those translate into clicks for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, it's probably provoking the opposite of rage from the magazine's infamously attention-seeking Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown.

Early last week, Tina Brown announced that she’d lured back Dan Klaidman, a longtime managing editor of Newsweek and its former D.C. bureau chief, who would flex his investigative reporting muscles as a special correspondent. Mr. Klaidman was among the last to ditch Newsweek after it was sold by the Washington Post Company to Barry Diller and Sidney Harman. On Friday, current managing editor Tom Weber, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, left the Beast after just six months on the job. He told Adweek he’s looking forward to getting back to working on his book.

On Monday, publisher Ray Chelstowski, the publisher, was reportedly dismissed, which was no surprise to Daily Beast insiders. One source told The Observer that he had been telling colleagues for weeks that he would not renew his contract. Mr. Chelstowski, credited with turning around Entertainment Weekly, started on Jan. 1 of this year. Many of his duties will be assumed by Eric Danetz, formerly of CBS Interactive.

Just hours after Mr. Chelstowski’s departure was reported by The Times, Ms. Brown’s second in command, executive editor Edward Felsenthal, sent a note to the editorial staff announcing his imminent departure.

In a 2009 interview with The Observer, Mr. Felsenthal, a former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor, described the pace at the Beast as “exhausting,” but in his farewell note he wrote that building the Beast with Ms. Brown was the “most exciting” experience of his career and he was proud to have “invigorated” Newsweek and increased Beast traffic.

He added that Ms. Brown and company CEO Steve Colvin had been aware of his impending exit for months.  One year postmerger, he believes it’s time for some changes in leadership at the company, he wrote.

Evidently, NewsBeast brass agrees. Later that afternoon, Adweek reported that the Daily Beast had lured back a second staffer who had walked during the Tina transition, Mark Miller. A new position has been created for him: editorial operations director.

Adweek points out that Mr. Miller’s former role at Newsweek involved digital editorial management. But according to a Beast spokesperson, Mr. Miller will be a more or less direct replacement for Mr. Weber. Two editors will succeed Mr. Felsenthal in executive editorial roles: Justine Rosenthal at Newsweek and Jane Spencer at the Daily Beast.

A troika of women at the top of Newsweek’s masthead? That’s something new and different.

Mr. Klaidman was Newsweek's managing editor until February. Among the last of the old guard editors to leave, he had been with Newsweek since 1996, when was hired as an investigative reporter. He later became the magazine's Middle East correspondent and served as Washington bureau chief from 2001 to 2006. According to the announcement, Mr. Klaidman returns as a special correspondent in January.

Another scrap of good news out of Newsweek: A handful of big advertisers, including AT&T, Optum and Allergan, have returned to its pages as well, bringing ad pages this month and last up 10% year over year.

Newsweek

Tina Brown's Women in the World Summit, conceived of in 2010 and programmed by Kyle Gibson, is slated to occur for the third straight year in March 2012. Last night, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company made Women in the World an official foundation at a kick-off gala co-hosted by Meryl Streep, late Newsweek publisher Sidney Harman’s wife former Representative Jane Harman and the Fashion Week-weary Donna Karan and Diane von Furstenberg, among others. The foundation president is Kim Azzarelli, a former vice president of Goldman Sachs in the office of corporate engagement, which includes the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Goldman Sachs Signature Project: 10,000 Women.

"I can confirm that John is not the creator of the Twitter handle @CondeElevator," Conde Spokesperson Beth Jacobson told The Observer.

After a couple of mildly irritated tweets,  Mr. Jannuzzi published a good-humored denial on Lucky's website.

"According to The Daily Beast, sources say disciplinary action is only hours away and I'm shaking in my Tretorns," he wrote.

"On a personal note, according to another tipster, I'm 'not particularly well known'--I'll nurse my wounded ego later."

As far as we can tell, the only evidence it was him was that the account had followed him early in its brief life. It's somewhat ironic that the most hurtful things to come out of @CondeElevator weren't the elevator sound bytes themselves, but the anonymous barbs given to reporters, who, it must be said, led a witch hunt decidedly more aggressive than any internal Conde Nast investigation.

Maybe there's a lesson here! Oh, wait, definitely no. Meet @CondeElevator2.

The companies are among the first to launch branded channels on VYou, which provide brands with a landing page on which to curate other channels related to the brand. Mediaite and The Daily Beast are represented by reporters and editors; New York dating site HowAboutWe created six interactive TV shows ("The Love Seat," "The Sexperts," "Is This Weird?").

VYou is more intimate than Twitter (the technology is usually seen on porn sites) and other text-based forms of social media, making it attractive to companies hoping to humanize their brands. Same goes for people who want to humanize their brands--VYou also announced today that Piers Morgan of CNN has joined, although he hasn't posted any videos yet.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

Editor Tina Brown—despite some initial cold feet—is moving assuredly to build her new staff. Ms. Brown made her first big move last week, landing Dirk Barnett from Lucky as her creative director. Yesterday, as Newsweek savior Sidney Harman visited the Beast, she toured Newsweek's new offices, meeting with some top staffers—and conspicuously not meeting with some others.

There's no word yet on what the Dana move means for Newsweek's current front-of-the-book editor, Bret Begun, a well-regarded staffer who has been at the magazine for a decade. (Disclosure: I was a reporter at Newsweek until Oct. 29 and worked frequently under Mr. Begun.)

"As the planning process for the joint venture begins, many people will be involved in ways formal and informal. As of now, no new formal roles for Newsweek magazine have been assigned, other than Dirk Barnett—our new creative director," Beast spokesman Andrew Kirk wrote in an email.

As they wait to learn whether Ms. Brown will retain them, Newsweek staffers are hoping that if they do make the cut, they will not have to work out of their not-well-liked offices at 7 Hanover Square for long. An alumna of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Ms. Brown is said to despise the space, and executives have discussed having the merged company's editorial staff work out of the more modern IAC building.

Also in BeastWeek news today: Match.com boss Greg Blatt was named CEO of IAC after the surprise resignation of Barry Diller.

nsummers@observer.com | @nicksumm