The Daily Beast has long been an outlier in billionaire Barry Diller’s digital empire. As sites like Match.com and Expedia made millions over the years, Mr. Diller’s digital tabloid lost money, publishing one scoop after another but struggling to turn a profit.
Now, Mr. Diller is making a big push to change that and has brought in Ben Sherwood, the former president of Disney ABC Television Group, and Joanna Coles, the former chief content officer of Hearst magazines, to help.
Mr. Sherwood and Ms. Coles will receive an equity stake equivalent to about half of The Daily Beast, with IAC retaining a majority, according to a person familiar with the matter. This will allow them to share in the financial success of the site if they can grow its business. They will each be paid their wages. Mr Sherwood, 60, will be its managing director and publisher and Ms Coles, 61, will be creative and content director.
IAC declined to provide details on specific financial terms.
The decision to bring in Mr. Sherwood and Ms. Coles came after Mr. Diller considered selling The Daily Beast and held talks with various suitors. A potential deal with Janice Min, the founder of Hollywood newsletter company Ankler Media and former top editor of The Hollywood Reporter, did not work out.
“When Ben and Joanna made that presentation, I had really gotten to the point where I was kind of skeptical that anything was going to work, other than selling it,” Mr. Diller said. “But I was so impressed with their idea, their energy and their interest.”
Mr. Sherwood said the plan to revitalize The Daily Beast will draw inspiration from other publications that have achieved profitability through a combination of subscriptions, advertising and events. After building and selling another business, a youth sports company called Mojo, Mr. Sherwood — who also headed ABC News — said he found himself returning to journalism, where he felt he could make the biggest contribution. .
“The first and most important piece is to get in there, evaluate, observe, and then start influencing how we make great things and how we make people feel like The Daily Beast is a guilty necessity every day,” Mr. .said Sherwood.
Ms Coles and Mr Sherwood had been in talks in 2019 to work together on a digital media venture they called ‘Project Scoop’, but put it on the back burner to pursue other things. So when Mr. Diller’s banker got in touch earlier this year, they already had a shared vision of what The Daily Beast’s version could look like and pitched Mr. Diller to a partnership.
“The Beast has always punched above its weight,” Ms Coles said. “I’m excited to have a platform where we can highlight the hypocrisies of people in public life, where we can focus on people who behave badly and dig into the details around people that are very revealing.”
Mr Sherwood and Ms Coles said it was the perfect time to return to the news space. The upcoming presidential election, coupled with the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump and the turmoil in the Middle East underscore the importance of reliable news, they said.
Puck previously reported that Mr Sherwood and Ms Coles were in talks to join The Beast.
Founded in 2008 by former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown with backing from IAC, The Daily Beast has earned a reputation for attracting a disproportionate share of exclusive stories on media, politics and national security for its relatively small his staff — now has about 100 people .
But the publication’s work never matched its journalistic success. A 2010 merger with Newsweek that aimed to marry the gravitas of a storied news magazine with the digital prowess of a start-up didn’t last. Mr. Diller sold Newsweek in 2013 to the International Business Times.
Despite these struggles, Mr. Diller is optimistic about online news businesses that publish original journalism.
“When something is behind a paywall, the bar is high enough to get people to say they’re actually going to pay for something,” Mr. Diller said. “But guess what? It’s happening everywhere.”
