The start date of Tina Brown’s reinvented Newsweek after its merger with her Daily Beast Web site remains vague, but Ms. Brown’s efforts to build an impressive roster do not: Andrew Sullivan announced Sunday that his popular blog, “The Daily Dish,” would leave TheAtlantic.com and join Ms. Brown’s team in April.
“The chance to be part of a whole new experiment in online and print journalism, in the Daily Beast and Newsweek adventure, is just too fascinating and exciting a challenge to pass up,” Mr. Sullivan said in a blog entry. “And to work with media legends, Barry Diller and Tina Brown, and with the extraordinary businessmen Sidney Harman and Stephen Colvin, is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Mr. Sullivan will join Howard Kurtz, a three-decade veteran of The Washington Post who was lured to The Daily Beast in October 2010. At the time, Mr. Kurtz’s move ignited speculation that The Daily Beast would merge with Newsweek, which it did one month later. Mr. Kurtz said then that he wanted to “be more of an entrepreneur online.”
Commenting on Mr. Sullivan’s move, Ms. Brown said in a blog post that the blogger’s “fearlessness and doggedness makes him a natural soul mate of The Daily Beast.”
“A rarity, he is willing to admit mistakes and change positions (sometimes radically) in the face of new evidence,” she said. “Little wonder he has built one of the most devoted followings on the web, with 1.2 million unique visitors a month, 82 percent of them bookmarked.”
Ms. Brown said that The Daily Beast garnered more than six million unique visitors last month. In late 2010, Mr. Sullivan’s blog accounted for roughly a quarter of TheAtlantic.com’s monthly unique visitors, which reached 4.8 million last October.
Mr. Sullivan’s work will be promoted on The Daily Beast’s home page, and he will contribute to the ailing Newsweek magazine, Ms. Brown said.
After Newsweek merged with The Daily Beast in November 2010, Ms. Brown, who previously led Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, was given the task of turning both publications into money-making ventures. The addition of Mr. Sullivan to the roster, Ms. Brown said, “will give The Dish a whole new audience and potential for growth and innovation.”
The date for the first issue of the revamped Newsweek has not been revealed, but one person briefed on the plan said last week that March 7 was the target.