Screenshot via Twitter.

The Daily Beast announced today that they were "have parted company" with media critic Howard Kurtz. The announcement came just a day after Mr. Kurtz came under fire for a blog post where he made the false claim that basketball player Jason Collins, who recently came out as gay in a Sports Illustrated cover story, failed to mention that he had been engaged. The Daily Beast retracted the post today.

“The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company," The Daily Beast's editor Tina Brown said in a statement to Politico's Dylan Byers. "Under the direction of our newly named political director John Avlon we have added new momentum and authority to our Washington bureau with columnists such as Jon Favreau, Joshua Dubois and Stuart Stevens joining our outstanding DC team of Eleanor Clift, Daniel Klaidman, Michael Tomasky, Eli Lake, David Frum and Michelle Cottle - giving us one of the best politics teams in the business which was instrumental in this week’s Webby win for Best News site.”

After the news broke, Mr. Kurtz tweeted about it--adding that it "in the works for some time."

“I've enjoyed my time at the Daily Beast but as we began to move in different directions, both sides agreed it was best to part company,” Mr. Kurtz tweeted this afternoon.

“This was in the works for some time, but want to wish all my colleagues continued success with a terrific website,” he added on Twitter a moment later.

UPDATE: A CNN source tells TV Newser that Mr. Kurtz's "current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last."

"Basically, we've gotten a third of a million dollars in 24 hours, with close to 12,000 paid subscribers (at last count). On average, readers paid almost $8 more than we asked for," Mr. Sullivan wrote this afternoon. "To say we're thrilled would obscure the depth of our gratitude and relief."

Yesterday, Mr. Sullivan asked for a pre-payment of $19.99 to become a subscriber--although he encouraged a larger contribution. So far, so good. Mr. Sullivan is "gob-smacked" by the support.

"If our goal was an annual income of somewhere around $900K (we erred on the safe side), we have gotten a third of the way there in 24 hours, which is why we're all somewhat gob-smacked," wrote Mr. Sullivan. "We feared it would take far longer for us to get that kind of support."

$19.99 for a year of content isn't that much. As Mr. Sullivan helpfully pointed out, it's only about a nickel a day.

But it got us thinking. What are some of the print publications one could get delivered for that price (or less) per year?

• Harper's Magazine is $16.97
• The Atlantic costs $14.95
• The National Review costs $19.95
• Vanity Fair is $15
• Vogue $19.99 for both print and digital, $14.99 for just print.
• Wired with tablet access is $19.99. Without tablet access (for the old-fashioned techie) is $14.99. Plus a free T-Shirt.
• Money is $14.95 for a year

But money isn't everything. Andrew Sullivan's "biased & balanced" The Dish will not have ads. And it is a chance to "[figure] out how to make journalism work in the new media world," wrote Mr. Sullivan. And, as said, "it's a pretty good investment."

The staff of The Dish. (Photo credit: AndrewSullivan)

New year, new business model for Andrew Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan is leaving the office he rarely visited and taking his Dish blog rogue. Instead of the blog living on The Daily Beast, Mr. Sullivan and his band of editors will set up an independent company called Dish Publishing LLC and publish without the benefit of a larger publication's umbrella, he announced in a blog post today.

Mr. Sullivan, one of The Beast's highest-profile names, is taking the gamble that his brand is strong enough to strike out on its own.

"Here's the core principle: we want to create a place where readers - and readers alone - sustain the site," he wrote. "No bigger media companies will be subsidizing us; no venture capital will be sought to cushion our transition (unless my savings count as venture capital); and, most critically, no advertising will be getting in the way."

As of February 1, The Dish will revert to its old URL, www.andrewsullivan.com and establish a membership model in which readers pay for his content. A yearly subscription to The Dish will be $19.99 a year, although readers are welcome to give more. Andrew Sullivan's blog will be on The Daily Beast for the next month, and Mr. Sullivan wrote that he has Tina Brown and Barry Diller's blessing.

"In fact, Tina and Barry have been fully supportive of this decision once we made it, although we're all sad to part ways," Mr. Sullivan wrote.

Indeed, Ms. Brown tweeted the news: "Andrew Sullivan boldly strikes off on his own. Sad to see him go, but wishing @SullyDish all the best!"

The move is reminiscent of Glen Beck leaving Fox News and, of course, comes on the heels of Newsweek layoffs and the end of the print publication.

Most importantly, does this mean that Mr. Sullivan--who is not a fan of New York--will return to Washington?

Tina Brown (Photo: BeastTV)

Newsbeast editor in chief Tina Brown seems to have developed a redemptive streak, at least when it comes to the bad boys and girls of the media world. Her website has recently published several pieces by otherwise disgraced journalists.

On Friday, Ms. Brown brought in Mike Daisey to pen a piece on the first anniversary of the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. You may remember Mr. Daisey as the man who forced the public radio show This American Life to air an extensive mea culpa after he adapted his one-man show about the brutal conditions at Chinese factories that make Apple products for its broadcast, and it was later found to contain, as the subsequent retraction put it, “numerous fabrications.” Though Mr. Daisey included untruths in his story and, in the words of the radio show's team, “misled This American Life during the fact-checking process,” The Daily Beast apparently had no problem giving him over 1,000 words and two accompanying four-minute “BeastTV” videos, in which he “reflects on the last year” in which he “fell from grace” and acknowledges that mistakes were made, but nonetheless credits himself with sparking a wider discussion of Apple’s labor practices.

Mr. Daisey isn’t the only fabulist who has contributed to The Daily Beast in the past few months. In late July, the site brought in disgraced former Timesman Jayson Blair to weigh in after The New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer was busted for making up Bob Dylan quotes in his best-selling pop science book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

“Nine years ago, I was Jonah Lehrer,” Mr. Blair wrote. That sentence may be the most accurate thing Mr. Blair’s ever written, and it’s why he’s blacklisted throughout the journalism word, except apparently at the Beast, where it increasingly looks like Ms. Brown is running some sort of media rehab facility.

Indeed, just one day before Mr. Blair’s piece ran, Joan Juliet Buck took to the Beast to tell “her side of the story” about a widely reviled puff piece profiling the wife of brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad that she wrote for Vogue in February 2011. Ms. Buck’s story praised Mrs. Assad as “wildly democratic” and “glamorous, young and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” The story provoked instantaneous ridicule and was eventually scrubbed from Vogue’s website.

The Daily Beast didn’t include an explanation for why it allowed Ms. Buck to make the improbable claim that she “didn’t know” Mr. Assad was “a murderer” when she started working on her story. However, based on the growing rogue’s gallery accumulating bylines at the site, it seems that ethical questions won’t stop the benevolent editor-confessor from opening her pages to the fallen. But not all good deeds go punished, and giving a new platform to wayward scribes may be a speedy route to page-views—if not to critical acclaim. For example, the piece by Ms. Buck was criticized by many other websites, which of course linked to it in conjunction with their critiques.

We reached out to Ms. Brown to ask about her decision to publish these journalistic miscreants and whether we might expect more blighted Beast bylines in the future. As of this writing, she has yet to respond. We imagine she’s probably busy trying to get in touch with Mr. Lehrer.

Update (10/10/12 11:42 a.m.): An earlier version of this story described This American life as an NPR show. It is distributed to public radio stations by PRI, not NPR. 

Code and Theory's Brandon Ralph with wife Adriana Biasi

“God, have you ever walked into a meeting and thought, This is not going to go well?” Code and Theory founder and creative director Brandon Ralph moaned. “That’s what it was like when we went to pitch to The Daily Beast.”

Sitting with him in his 5th floor SoHo offices, it was easy to imagine what the handsome and lanky 33-year-old was talking about. The Observer had come in to meet with the man who had been hand-picked by Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, Peter Brant, and Jason Binn to create their online platforms. With long, dark, wavy hair; leather bracelets; and a penchant for John Varvatos; Mr. Ralph looked more the part of a hip New York restaurateur.

He was quite press-shy: his only major interview since he co-founded his company in 2001 was with Ad Week, and he obliquely referred to not being happy with the results. In addition, some recent layoffs at Code and Theory had attracted unwanted attention by MediaBistro’s Agency Spy, leading Mr. Ralph to be even more reticent in front of a recorder than usual. So yeah, after five minutes in Mr. Ralph’s office, we actually could visualize a meeting that wasn’t going well.

“They were trying out four different design teams, and I think we were the fifth,” Mr. Ralph told The Observer of his first meeting with Ms. Brown’s staff. “We only had two days to prepare specs, and the whole presentation, people were just checking their watches.”

As they were about to be ushered out, a deus ex machina descended in the form of a bomb threat, forcing the whole building to evacuate. Somehow, Mr. Ralph and Ms. Brown were separated from the rest of their respective teams, and ended up at Cookshop on 10th Avenue, where they drank coffee and connected.

“We just sat at a coffee table, talking about designs and different approaches to the site,” Mr Ralph told The Observer, still incredulous over the series of events. “People kept asking how it went. I told everyone it was ‘very strange, but then very intimate.’”

“Twenty minutes later, we got a phone call telling us we were hired.”
But Ms. Brown and Mr. Ralph didn’t immediately see eye to eye on how to approach the digital news site’s layout. When Code and Theory presented a mock-up using gibberish—a standard design practice—the Newsweek editor demanded to see actual content in its place.

“We ended up having to create a new site mock-up every single day through the launch,” He grimaced. What he learned from the exercise was that his design couldn’t rest on sexy photos; it had to have energy even on a slow news day.

Ms. Brown remembered her first scuffles with Mr. Ralph as well. “He wasn’t used to clients saying they were coming down to the studio to sit in front of the screen and try stuff out,” she told The Observer. “He freaked out at first, then realized how fun it is to marry news adrenaline and digital design.”

Ms. Brown and Mr. Ralph still keep in touch. He refers to the media mogul as one of his greatest teachers. She, meanwhile, gushes about some of Mr. Ralph’s other impressive qualities.

“Brandon’s a heartthrob,” she told The Observer. “Every single woman in the office is a bit in love with him.”

Tina Brown’s colleagues aren’t the only ones vulnerable to Mr. Ralph’s charms. He and Lenny Kravitz became close personal friends after Code and Theory redesigned his web site and filmed and edited two of Mr. Kravitz’s music videos.

“I invited him and his wife down to New Orleans to visit me,” Mr. Kravitz told The Observer. “He’s brilliant designer and a great thinker and a great friend. He’s inspiring. We’re constantly emailing each other things, like photos of camera gear, architecture, art. We like to bounce things to each other. He’s got this amazing eye, for photography and design and everything.”

Mr. Ralph’s LennyKravitz.com is a fresh-looking aggregator of web content about the artist, one that employs bold hieroglyphics and symbols where there otherwise would be titles. Such a heavily accessorized look is risky these days, but somehow, it works—especially considering the rock personality it reflects.

The offices of Code and Theory

“Code and Theory’s sites get attention for disruption,” said Nicholas Daniel-Richards, former CTO of the company. “Making something that’s completely different from what you’d expect might not even make sense at first. Then the industry takes notice and starts trying to do the same.”
The difference between Mr. Ralph’s shop and the larger agencies, Mr. Daniel-Richards told The Observer, is that the big firms will churn out “a very efficient German machine, like a Mercedes: very powerful, with perfect craftsmanship, but no personal touches. And then you have these alternatives like an Aston Martin, which are creative and funky, and have soul. That’s Brandon.”

Code and Theory’s name has become synonymous with old media’s more innovative forays into new media. The most recent example would be last month’s launch of Jason Binn’s 1%-er magazine, DuJour, which sought to create a unique web entity separate from but associated with print. For the project, Mr. Ralph came up with the idea of having the site resemble the physical product: it begins at the cover, and readers have to flip through pages of content, like they would on an iPad (or an actual paper product).

“It was this insight I had,” Mr. Ralph recalled. “No matter how old a magazine is, or if it’s at your house or a dentist’s office...you’ll go from cover to cover.” So Mr. Ralph created a “focused” digital product that didn’t show the top news stories of the day.

When first viewing the DuJour website, readers might be confused by the cover photo and lack of a scrolling content bar. But once the user is accustomed to the unconventional design, the images pop, the stories breathe and the overall effect is uncluttered and refreshing.

“We’re not showing you 100 things on every page, like some websites that have all these links that scream, ‘Please, look at me!’” Mr. Ralph said. “I mean I think that works for websites that need to be very timely,” he amended quickly. (He did design the layout for the scream-worthy TMZ.com, after all). “But for a magazine that needs to be very luxurious, we told the editors, ‘Invest in your content. Users will scroll.’ ”

For Vogue.com’s 2010 overhaul, the challenge was to modernize the site’s color way and typefaces and create a brand-specific social community. In a response that typified reviews among the fashion set, Women’s Wear Daily wrote: “Love the oversize features carousel and the locking navigation bar! A beautiful redesign work by (once again) Code and Theory.”

For the record, Vogue.com is more than happy with the results, editor Caroline Palmer told The Observer. The “relaunch was one of our brand’s most important recent initiatives, making it essential that we collaborate with the right agency. Now that we’ve worked closely with Brandon and his team for more than two years, it’s clear to us that they are one of the top agencies in their field.”

That doesn’t mean Mr. Ralph and company will work for any media entity with a blank check. Without naming names, he told The Observer, “We’ll tell clients we want to work with them, but we don’t think they should do this project, because it’s set up to fail.”

Bossing around big names is a far cry from the firm’s humble beginnings 11 years ago, when Mr. Ralph opened up shop out of his Lower East Side apartment with childhood friend Dan Gardner. The two had $500 to their names.

They had grown up on Long Island, and spent time working in the dot com age with smaller, online agencies before being asked to create the digital department of a traditional ad firm, Draft. When Ralph and Gardner got the opportunity to strike out on their own, they went for it. One of their first jobs was creating a site for Sony using Flash Video Player.

Today, they employ more than 100 people at Code and Theory, which Mr. Ralph stressed, was another kind of collaborative process. “There are creative people who have moved into the strategy group, and creatives who have taught themselves how to be engineers.”

“Everyone here is a Swiss army knife,” he boasted.

Like many arty types that have taken the corporate route, Mr. Ralph—who also dabbles in interior design, fashion, and photography—worries that he’s sold out his craft. Meanwhile, his colleagues sometimes wonder whether they can possibly execute his outside-the-box ideas, according to a former employee.

“Brandon has the ideas, but then there are the realities of the situation, and they’re not always feasible,” said the employee. “You can’t expect people to work 110 hours a week and not get burned out with the crushing hours and a volatile employer, but that’s how they get things done there.”
In January of last year, Code and Theory helped recreate Interview magazine’s web site, and then the two companies traded spaces. The design shop’s new space is more than 20,000 square feet, all the better to branch into print design and TV commercials, Mr. Ralph’s next moves.

After we had turned our recorder off and packed up, Mr. Ralph offered to give us the grand tour, culminating in his favorite place in the never-ending floor of Code and Theory. Leading us through a side door into a cramped, almost hidden corridor lined with two stories of books, he flung open the heavy wooden doors to the library: a gigantic room with thousands of books left over from the Interview days.

“Now if we could only figure out the Dewey Decimal System they were using when they organized everything,” Mr. Ralph grinned.

Mr. Ralph shook his head at the archaic line of code that had created order from the massive amount of data. It was a design he could respect, and for the first time since we had walked into his office, he looked genuinely happy.

Screenshot via Instagram

Illusionist David Blaine stopped by Newsweek/The Daily Beast for an appearance on BeastTV today. While in the company's West Chelsea office, Mr. Blaine couldn't resist demonstrating his powers to what we assume were wowed staffers.

Excited writers tweeted the events (with pictures). It isn't every day that magic happens in a newsroom. 

"I just held David Blaine's wrist for a trick and my hand was SO clammy ..." tweeted reporter @ElizaShapiro.

"@aliyarrow just got served by @davidblaine. She was lost in his eyes.#aztektomb @ IAC," tweeted Deputy Books Editor Jimmy So.

Mr. Blaine is making the rounds to promote his latest stunt--he will stand on top of a 20-foot pillar for 72 hours and be electrified by a million votes of electricity. Mr. Blaine will not eat or sleep for the entire three-day period.

Based on the Beast staffers' awed responses to Mr. Blaine this afternoon, it sounds like the magician will have no trouble generating fawning coverage for the feat.

Karma's A Nice Person Sometimes: Recently let-go, widely-read, and widely-liked Village Voice staff writer (and, full disclosure, a former co-worker of this writer's) Camille Dodero was snapped up by Gawker as a writer there. The site's editor A.J. Daulerio on his estimable new hire, who starts September 24th:

"She's the tits."

Direct quote. [@AJDaulerio]

Drew-Hoo: New York Times multimedia editor Andrew DeVigal is leaving the paper for an "interactive studio" in Portland. Fence-jumper. [Tumblr]

From Reuters to Rock: Reuters senior media correspondent Yinka Adegoke is going to Billboard as Deputy Editor. [Billboard]

She Don't Want Your Life: Daily Beast columnist Michelle Goldberg apparently got into a pretty heated exchange with Varsity Blues actor Jon Voight.

Voight simmered for a moment and then said, “Take it easy there, shorty.” As Goldberg looked on in amazement, Voight sprang out of his low-slung chair. “Let’s just stand up, how tall are you?” he demanded, hovering over her a tad menacingly. 

She's basically Jonathan Moxon. As opposed to spending absurd amounts of money, starting fights at the RNC is not, in fact, the worst editorial strategy. [The Daily Beast]

Teach Me How To Shupak: NY1 "Rail and Road Report" morning celebrity and erstwhile Observer Media Power Bachelorette (Class of 2011) Jamie Shupak made a video with someone from the NY Daily News about How To Ride The Subway. Not sure she's actually an expert on this, per se, but if there's going to be one, it should be her. [YouTube]

Huffington Post Labs Exactly as Scary As It Sounds: While she might not be attaching giraffe parts to reporters for new blogging limbs, Arianna Huffington does have something called "Huffington Post Labs" where they're conducting crazy news experiments. The first one involves the most popular sentences on the Huffington Post, which is basically what news on the internet will be one day: A series of popular sentences. [TechCrunch]

A Rich Legacy: Is it a coincidence that Frank Rich got on Reddit not a day after Barack Obama did? Better yet, is there a better moment in that entire thread than when answered a question from a young woman in love with his son, Simon Rich, who wanted a "good word" put in for her? Rich's answer:

"Get in line."

My answer: Nope. [Romenesko]

Not Afraid To Be Servicey: One of the few genuinely nice organizations we'd love to see survive for future generations of Internet, or media, or multimedia, or whatever it is: StoryCorps now has a KickStarter page everyone should give money to. Alternately, everyone should go do a StoryCorps. [KickStarter]

- - -

That's the end of the day, here. Tips, story ideas, Varsity Blues DVD easter eggs? We want to hear all of them. Tell us everything you know. | @weareyourfek

Some Blogger, as Forgotten By History.

It's raining me...dia items. Hallelujah. With so much to get through today, rather than act out the pretense that people are ever going to click on media news roundups from a landing page, we're just going to skip the obligatory formalities of teasing anything out and just get right into them. Starting now. 

As such, here are your Wednesday Evening Media Briefs. 

TBD's Fate is Now "D." Hyperlocal DC news site TBD.com—which, by all accounts, was halfway decent until it was shut down—has now been shut down for what's likely the last time. Watching former TBD editor Erik Wemple have to eulogize it at the Washington Post is bittersweet, especially since the kind folks at the Post (namely, Paul Farhi) were once so welcoming of their new competition (then again, Wemple, a fine journalist himself, is employed as he should be). [Washington Post]

Snake Eats Own Tail: Speaking of schadenfreude and Paul Farhi—who ESPN's Tony Kornheiser once called a "duplicitous snake"—today, Paul Farhi is being corrected...for his attempt at putting the paddle to currently embattled Washington Post contributor Fareed Zakaria. Farhi wrote a piece on Monday in which he raked Zakaria over the coals, and accused Zakaria of journalistic malfeasance by way of quoting a source without mentioning that the quote appeared somewhere else years earlier. As Politico's Dylan Byers put it: "Farhi apparently did not consult the passages in question." A few hours later, this correction is printed:

The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article. We regret the error and apologize to Fareed Zakaria.

Paul Farhi, as far as we can tell, still works at the Washington Post. [Politico]

Jodie Foster, Faithful Daily Beast Reader and Writer. The Daily Beast sure loves itself some big-name contributors. Take, for example, today's essay by Jodie Foster, in which she laments the frenzied celebrity media culture that surrounds people like Kristen Stewart, whose recent breakup with Robert Pattinson has been extensively documented by what Jodie Foster calls the "gladiator sport of celebrity culture." Thankfully, she is writing for a news outlet that would never stoop that low. [The Daily Beast]

Donald Trump Writes Off Evil Hack Blogger, Who Is Now Obviously Irrelevant: It was suggested that—due to some relation among higher-ups—The Observer wouldn't touch this thing involving Loser Salon™'s own news terrorist, pathological liar, and North Korean-born teenage vampire Alex Pareene attacking the good and unsullied name of thrice-over gajillionare and macro-economic powerhouse/pending MacArthur Genius Grant for Money recipient Donald Trump, chairman and CEO of The Trump Corporation LLC, creative mastermind behind NBC's hit television ratings behemoth The Apprentice, a renowned sportsman-cum-environmentalist who cares about the economic state of all Americans just as much as he does the fact that they take their vitamins. For whom anything from a historic neighborhood that once saw the sun to beautiful rural Scottish moorlands that have been untouched for generations to outer space represents nothing but opportunity for monumentally prosperous, important, and occasionally profitable human endeavor? The Donald Trump who bravely dared question the authenticity of a (in all likelihood, treasonous) anti-American American president's birth certificate in the face of the countless experts who contradicted that claim and The President of the United States presenting the birth certificate himself on national television, not just before all of that, but after it, too? The same Donald Trump appearing at this year's Republican National Convention, where they will salivate for him to run for High Office again, but are obviously unworthy of such refined leadership, so they'll have to settle with simply having their minds blown and hearts won over? That Donald Trump? The fact is, a journalist being smashed off the face of the planet by the withering, blistering, face-melting parenthetical wit that is Donald Trump's is, in fact, news, and worthy of being covered. As such: Alex Pareene wrote a bunch of lies and terrible things about Donald Trump, and—as he's already done to Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner and ProPublica's Justin Elliot before him—Donald Trump wrote him out of history. Forever. The entire thing was pretty funny. [Loser Salon™, @RealDonaldTrump, Loser Salon™]

It's Like His Girl Friday Meets The Departed: Speaking of honorable types, the staunch ethicists at the top of News Corp are taking further action to root out any unsavory journalism practices tainting the high standards to which they hold their profession, and sacred strictures by which they abide. They're launching an "Anti-Corruption Review" which, according to Rupert Murdoch himself, "not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing by any particular business unit or its personnel" and called it a "forward-looking review."  [Guardian UK]

More Like 'State of Lame': On that note, here are newspaper films, ranked by popularity via Netflix. [Romenesko]

Daisey and Confused: Former This American Life contributor Mike Daisey thinks tech writers don't do their jobs, and implores them to not just swallow Apple's press lines. He also recognizes that he's had his own journalism problems, but isn't the entire problem that he tried to pass it off as journalism and that he's not in much of a place to speak to journalism ethics to begin with? You decide. Either way, he's right about at least part of this. [Mike Daisey]

Conde Nast Does Not Have a Company-Wide Policy Regarding Jonah Lehrer: Well, he may not work at The New Yorker anymore, but Jonah Lehrer will possibly continue to write for Wired, reported Buzzfeed's Ben Smith. Wired later posted a statement saying they haven't fully made the decision yet, though the outlook isn't so grim. We're not the gambling types, but we will take odds that if it goes through, Lehrer's next Wired piece written post-Lehrergate will be about what it's like to be at the center of an Internet "Snarkstorm" or somesuch business. [Buzzfeed, Wired]

On The Matter of Piers Morgan's Waning Influence. Well...

[@BBCSporf]

No Sweet Home: Finally, to end on a depressing note, this writer's hometown newspaper just laid off five more staffers. Here's hoping they don't go on to become "International Bestsellers" in their next career. [Romenesko]

Tips, scandal, or effusive praise of great American capitalists? Send it right this way.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Well...

April 2010: Newsweek is on the verge of a big web re-launch, which they've invested heavily in. Staffers at Newsweek are excited for a new digital look, but they're wondering why they're hearing rumors they're being moved out of their snazzy new West Village offices they just moved into, which is weird, right?

May 2010: It is indeed weird, as they find out. Newsweek is put up for sale by The Washington Post Company, which has owned it since 1961. Donald Graham of The Washington Post Company says the magazine "might be a better fit elsewhere." Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham begins a (noble, but tragic and doomed) quest/publicity tour to find the money to buy it himself. The sales book for the company leaks and, surprise surprise, one of the cost-cutting ideas involves reducing the staff. Newsweek will move two more times between now and end of this timeline.

Early October 2010: Sidney Harman emerges as the buyer of Newsweek after other suitors who aren't Jon Meacham—including Politico and Reuters—didn't pony up for the magazine. People marvel at the fact/irony that a 91 year-old man is investing in a national print weekly which (despite some very fine journalism) many Americans are only familiar with as that magazine they read at the dentist's office. The asking price? One American Dollar ($1.00), plus Newsweek's swelling debt.

October 2010, Two Seconds Later: Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham resigns.

Late October 2010: Harman is profiled by New York Magazine. He admits that he struggles to remember the word "dinosaur." It's reported elsewhere that Harman's privately saying he can float $40M to the venture and give it three years to succeed. The search for a replacement editor starts at Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria and goes outward from there, far and wide, even at one point netting former Observer editor Peter Kaplan. Newsweek moves offices again.

November 5th, 2010: Free of Newsweek, The Washington Post Company celebrates a 21 percent quarter-to-quarter rise in online publishing profits.

November 2010: The new Sidney Harman-owned Newsweek merges with Barry Diller's IAC-owned The Daily Beast after around a month of formal talks, which at one point completely broke down. An ostensibly reluctant Tina Brown is anointed the editor-in-chief of both properties, and put in charge of her first magazine since Talk, which had the best magazine launch party ever, so this is going to go smoothly. Nobody is quite sure how it's going to work but people at The Daily Beast are very excited that they're going to be printed in dead trees and ink. The very few staffers left at Newsweek who were there before the sale was announced—meaning they've either survived layoffs or haven't yet found jobs elsewhere—are utterly terrified and, in most instances, praying for a buyout option. Others, like those at the website, would like to keep their website, and launch a Tumblr confusingly called Save Newsweek Dot Com. Those staffers are later poached by Tumblr. The Observer's media reporter at the time (a former Newsweek staffer) then writes: "Oh my God. This is really going to happen." He is later poached by Newsweek/The Daily Beast.

March 2011: The first issue of the Tina Brown-edited Newsweek emerges with Hillary Clinton on the cover, under cover lines about her "war" on the glass ceiling, which nobody should take to mean as anything other than another issue of Newsweek. Ms. Brown "pens" a memorable Internal Memo, "obtained" by the Observer. The second issue has a piece by Bret Easton Ellis, concerning the matter of Charlie Sheen. By now, Andrew Sullivan has been poached by Tina Brown for Newsweek/The Daily Beast. The nu-Newsweek has arrived.

April 13, 2011: Sidney Harman, who remained an active part of Newsweek/The Daily Beast's operations, dies at 92. He is survived by his wife, Jane Harman, a U.S. Democratic Congresswoman. In a New York Times article headlined "Harman Family to Keep Its Stake in Newsweek," Sidney Harman's lawyer explains:

“The Harman family is totally committed to Newsweek and its future,” he said. “They will continue to be active and supportive as Sidney would have wished and in Sidney’s memory.”

The manager of the Harman family's investment in Newsweek/The Daily Beast isn't yet clear. Harman's 29 year-old son is floated as a possibility, but Daniel Harman, who is in business school at the time, probably knows better than to get into media at his first strike in the world as a businessman.

May 2011: Jane Harman is now managing the Harman Family's interest in Newsweek. Tina Brown is profiled by the The New York Times Magazine, and we learn that Harman had taken to calling Brown "my beauty" and that Brown's complete control over Newsweek—which at this point has seen magazine sales go up, but ad sales go down—was hard-won.

July 2011: Newsweek.com ceases to exist.

September 2011: Jon Meacham is now a contributing editor at Newsweek's sworn enemy, Time.

October 31, 2011: AdWeek's Lucia Moses has a spooky piece about nu-Newsweek detailing the fact that Newsweek has a ways to go, and that becoming profitable by 2013—the timeframe Barry Diller originally gave the venture—won't be easy:

If that task takes years and Newsweek can’t find a way to regain the relevance weekly newsmagazines have lost since the explosion of news on the Internet, then Diller and Jane Harman, Sidney Harman’s widow, could reach the point where they finally decide to cut bait.

July 24, 2012: One year, three months, and eleven days was the amount of time it took from the Harman family to go from "totally committed" to the partnership with IAC and Barry Diller that oversaw Newsweek to only holding a minority stake in it. "The Harman trust has indicated it does not intend to make further capital contributions to the venture," it is explained, as the Harmans confirmed to Reuters' Peter Lauria—a former Daily Beast writer working for a company which, if you'll remember, was once interested in buying Newsweek—that their stake in the magazine/website has been diluted to a "minimum level of ownership." The Harman family refutes a rumor that the decision was based on the content of the magazine under Tina by explaining the decision as "purely financial."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

And who, pray tell, pulled the Pulitzers?

The New York Times! All of them!

Except, not:

This is what happens when a trigger-happy blogger attempts to head off the competition, armed with a form post, a 'Publish' button, and SEO blackmagick: You get Internet Egg all over your face.

Even more, almost half an hour after Politico blogger Patrick Gavin noticed the page, it's still live on The Daily Beast's site.

On that note, The Daily Beast is probably not going to take home that 'Breaking News Reporting' Pulitzer. Bookies, adjust your odds accordingly.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek