Chelstowski Named Publisher of Newsweek/Daily Beast

In another sign that the two organizations are ready to merger, Ray Chelstowski, a former publisher of Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, has been named publisher of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, reports Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times.

Chelstowski is the  former publisher of Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly.

Peters offers this background in his report:

Under Mr. Chelstowski’s plan, the advertising sales staffs of Newsweek and The Daily Beast will eventually become one, and sales people will sell print and digital ads for both brands.

That could lead to further staff downsizing, but Mr. Chelstowski said it was premature to say whether there would be job cuts.

“Right now there are two separate sales staffs, two separate operations,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “I think the best way to go to market is in an integrated capacity.”

Since Barry Diller, whose IAC/InterActiveCorp started The Daily Beast, and Sidney Harman, who bought Newsweek late last year, agreed to merge operations in November, both organizations have been figuring out how to coexist. Newsweek will remain as a distinct magazine brand, while the Daily Beast Web site will become the vehicle for news online. Newsweek.com will no longer exist in its current form, and readers who type that address into their Web browsers will be redirected to DailyBeast.com.

Tina Brown, a former editor at The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, who was leading editorial operations at The Daily Beast, is now the editor of Newsweek as well.

NY Post: Newsweek/Daily Beast Merger Is Weeks Away

Newsweek owner Sidney Harman told New York Post's Keith J. Kelly that the long-awaited merger of the struggling news magazine and the Daily Beast will finally happen in mid-January.

Kelly writes this morning:

There was no word from Barry Diller, chairman of the InterActiveCorp/IAC side of the new joint venture, which owns the Daily Beast.

Most observers blame legal and paperwork delays, combined with the usual holiday slowdown rather than any serious snags that could derail the deal reached in early November.

That means Tina Brown, the Daily Beast editor-in-chief and former editor of The New Yorker and the much-hyped failure Talk Magazine, will have longer to wait before she can put her stamp on the newsweekly when she takes over the combined operations.

In the meantime, interim co-editors Dan Klaidman and Nisid Hajari have agreed to stick around until at least the end of January -- and possibly longer.

They have been running the magazine since Jon Meacham left in late August.