Ten days after its reported execution date, Newsweek’s website began redirecting to a vertical at The Daily Beast.
Now, upon landing, readers see a pop up featuring the much-used editor portrait of Tina Brown and a friendly message.
“Right now you’re visiting the new Newsweek channel of The Daily Beast. We hope you’ll feel right at home,” Ms. Brown says.
But on the back-end, according to one source familiar with the operations, it was actually The Daily Beast which switched over to Newsweek’s CMS, about three months ago. The Newsweek Daily Beast did not immediately return request for comment.
Gone with the URL are four mid-to-high level staffers. Former Newsweek special editions editorial director Jack Livings has become an international editor at Time, Inc., Newsweek.com executive producer Jon Groat now holds a similar title at Maxim, web developer Mark Catalano now develops Fast Company, and Brian Carney, former manager of sales development at Newsweek is now the same at Bloomberg Businessweek.
It wasn’t all loss this month. The Daily Beast Newsweek video department picked up senior coordinating producer David Wharton from ABC and hired marketing manager Ann Levin.
They also stole Martha Stewart Omnimedia’s Rosanne Lufrano, who will serve as digital vice president in charge of iPad app re-boot, according to Daily Intel.
“As you know ad pages in Newsweek are up 88% since Tina’s first redesigned issue appeared on newsstands in March,” spokesman Andrew Kirk added.
