What happens to Moonie-ism without Reverend Moon?

"As the amount of subsidies makes clear, the Washington Times served for three decades as a vanity publication of the Rev. Moon. And when the funders of vanity publications die or simply move on, the zeal of the heirs for propping up their babies may wane."

-- WaPo media blogger Erik Wemple, in "As the
Rev. Moon goes, so goes the Washington Times?"

by Ken

So Rev. Sun Myung Moon has passed on to the higher spiritual realms. The reverend was 92, and understandably doesn't seem to have made much news in the last decade or so; what news has come out of his Unification Church has mostly concerned apparently vicious infighting among warring family members and other internal factions. Still, you have to wonder what happens now that the far-right-wing loon has been officially and permanently removed from the equation.

Erik Wemple focuses on the future of the Washington Times, into which, he reminds us, Reverend Moon poured vast sums of church money (reportedly $1 billion) in the decade following its founding in 1982, apparently for the privilege of controlling a propaganda outlet in our nation's capital. By rights the Moonie Times should have been a giant joke. It's a sign of the divorce between the Right and reality, which came to overtake much of our public discourse, that the paper was actually often taken seriously. (In fairness, when right-wingers turned on one another in its pages, the paper did offer insights not readily available elsewhere. After all, who knows more about felonious right-wing thugs than other felonious right-wing thugs?)

Wemple notes that the Washington Times has published "a wide-ranging obituary" of its founder which "spans six Web pages," and yet omits any mention of "the enduring financial difficulties of the paper." (Note: There are lots of links onsite.)

Reports from the early 2000s suggested that the Washington Times lifetime subsidy from Moon’s worldwide business holdings was approaching the $2 billion mark. And according to a departed Washington Times executive, annual subsidies of late have clocked in at around $30 million.

Another bit of Moon biography that doesn’t get its due in the official Washington Times obit is the nasty and embarrassing 2010 intra-family dispute over funding of the paper. Without diving too deeply into Moonology, feuding branches of the family bickered over the ownership and subsidies to the paper, and a faction including Moon intimate Douglas Joo reacquired the newspaper. The deal restored subsidies to the paper, which had been cut off for about a year.

Perspectives on whether the money will flow don’t line up. A former Times official punditizes: “As long as the old man was alive, they’d keep subsidizing it, but the impression was that once the old man died, they’d find a way to unwind this thing.”

Larry Zilliox, an opposition research expert and observer of the Unification Church, professes greater sunnyism about the prospects of continued funding. “I think they’re in position to maintain the subsidies,” says Zilliox, noting that those left in charge of the Unification movement “know the value” of the Washington Times. . . .

Perhaps if Moon and his deputies had realized what they’d stumbled upon back when they founded the Washington Times in 1982, we wouldn’t be obsessing about these subsidies. Nineteen eighty-two was six years before Rush Limbaugh would take his conservative talk radio show to a national listenership, making ungodly amounts of money. It was also 14 years before Fox News launched its brand of conservative -leaning television; it is said to be on track for $1 billion in profits this year. And long before the Internet presented another opportunity to cash in on the plume of national interest in conservative politics.

The Washington Times watched all of those luxury liners pass by, thanks to the spirit in which Moon had launched it. “They ran it as more an extension of the movement than as an enterprise,” says Zilliox.

POSTSCRIPT: THE HARMAN HEIRS STOP POURING $$$
DOWN THE NEWSWEEK DAILY BEAST $$$ SINKHOLE

To drive home his point that "when the funders of vanity publications die or simply move on, the zeal of the heirs for propping up their babies may wane," Erik Wemple points out: "Just look at the summer’s headlines regarding Newsweek."

The link is to a late-July Reuters piece, "Exclusive: IAC takes control of Newsweek Daily Beast from Harmans," which begins:

The family of late billionaire stereo magnate Sidney Harman has stopped investing in the Newsweek Daily Beast Co joint venture that it co-owns with Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, according to representatives of both companies.

IAC said it continues to subsidize Newsweek Daily Beast's operations, and as a result its initial 50 percent interest in the joint venture has grown into a controlling stake.

The Harman family confirmed its ownership stake has been diluted by its decision to cap contributions to the loss-making venture, but would not give a figure. The family plans to maintain a minimum level of ownership in the venture, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Jane Harman, the former Democratic congresswoman from California [one of DWT's least favorite Dem congresscritters -- Ed.] who has overseen the estate's interest since her husband's death in April 2011, will remain on the company's board and participate in conferences and other media events it organizes, according to the family.

"The Harman family remains supportive partners in the business of Newsweek Daily Beast, including service on the Board by Jane Harman and family participation in various informal roles," the Harman family said in a statement to Reuters.

"However, given the death of Sidney Harman, who was actively involved in the Newsweek Daily Beast business, the Harman trust has indicated that it does not intend to make further capital contributions to the venture." . . .

Although the cause is far from lost (insiders point to all sorts of financially positive-ish developments), Newsweek Daily Beast is looking like yet another spectacular media whiff for Mistress Tina.

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Be still, my heart, the veil of secrecy lifts from "The New Newsweek"

Ohmygosh, is Harvey Weinstein the face of
The New Newsweek? Holy media muck, Batman!

by Ken

Ever since it was announced that the new Newsweek ownership was turning the magazine over to Ms. Tina Brown, to function as a sort of print offshoot of her Daily Beast webzine, two of the most closely guarded secrets in North America have been: (1) when The New Newsweek would debut, and (2) what the heck The New Newsweek would be. Recently word filtered out that the date on which Everything Would Be Changed would be March 7. Meanwhile, as to the sort of content producers and produced content to be expected in it, we've been getting glimmerings from the steady drip-drip-drip of supposedly high-profile talent acquisitions Ms. Tina has been revealing -- not just for the Daily Beast now, but for the new hybrid, er, Online-Offline Media Agglomeration (OOMA).

Most recently I made not very gentle fun of the latest pair of trophy hires I've heard about: the disgracefully lazy, dishonest, and seemingly not very bright Village media megastooge "Howie the Hump" Kurtz and that hard-charging legend in his own mind Andrew "You Can't Be a Professional Whore Unless You Can Get Someone to Pay You" Sullivan. Talk about media star power! Gadzooks, I'm blind!

The Hump, you'll recall, after spending his career at the Post as a Village slut for basically media chump change, has dreams of finally making intellectual corruption pay (he wants to be "more of an entrepreneur online"). Whereas our Andrew . . . well, I think this can be rendered only in his own words:

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. 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.

Well, today is March 7, and it turns out that this is indeed the big day. The on-sale date, not the cover date, which is March 14. The March 7 issue is the end of Newsweek's Ancien Régime, the one that, reports NYT "Media Decoder" blogger Jeremy W. Peters, through that issue "had 47 percent fewer ad pages than it did during the same period in 2010, according to the Media Industry Newsletter." You'll be cheered to learn that Vol. I, No. 1 of The New Newsweek --

contained greater mix of advertising categories, including high-end retailers like St. John, the woman’s clothing maker, and David Yurman, the jeweler. Ms. Brown’s magazines -- she edited Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk -- always drew luxury advertisers.

More importantly, though, Ms. Tina has finally had to lift the veil of secrecy from her content lineup. And Young Jeremy (he is young, wouldn't you assume? otherwise what's his excuse?) has three names for us. I hope you're sitting down, with emergency medication handy if appropriate. Okay, let's do it. Gently now, Jeremy. Don't, like, just go dropping bombshell-type names on us.

March 7, 2011, 2:13 PM

Familiar Bylines Grace Tina Brown’s Newsweek

By JEREMY W. PETERS

Harvey Weinstein. Leslie H. Gelb. Kathleen Parker. [Oh man, it's the heavy artillery! Jeez, Jeremy, I asked you not to do that. -- Ken]

Tina Brown reached for some of the more well-worn cards in her Rolodex to find authors for articles in the debut issue of her newly redesigned Newsweek, which hit newsstands Monday.

Ms. Brown, one of the most connected editors in America, has long relied on her friends in political, entertainment and diplomatic circles to contribute to her magazines and her Web site, The Daily Beast. Reporters who work for her know that she is famous for digging into her address book to give out home phone numbers for boldface names who might be good sources.

In the new Newsweek, Mr. Weinstein -- the high-powered film producer and Ms. Brown’s former boss at Talk magazine -- wrote the new back page feature called “My Favorite Mistake,” in which he describes turning down the opportunity to buy the film rights for best-selling novel “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Mr. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and high-ranking American diplomat whom Ms. Brown recruited to write opinion pieces for The Daily Beast, has a Newsweek piece on the revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

And Katheen Parker, another Daily Beast columnist who recently and awkwardly left her job as co-host of a CNN show with Eliot Spitzer, wrote about feminism in the context of the current Arab uprising.

Ms. Brown and her staff kept the plans for Newsweek’s redesign close to their vests. But they had been showing off a prototype of the new magazine to advertisers, which appeared to respond with some enthusiasm. The March 14 issue had noticeably more ad pages than recent issues of Newsweek.

Oh, fer cripes' sake.

There's more, but let me give you a moment to digest this much. That's one heavy dose of Beltway bloat and media morass.

Now you're probably asking, what about the look and feel of The New Newsweek? You probably want to know about the paper stock, for example, and how big the pictures are. And maybe even a word or two about the, you know, articles. Do you have anything for us, Young Jeremy?

Apart from new advertisers, what landed on newsstands and in subscribers’ mailboxes on Monday is a magazine that looks and feels little like the old Newsweek but preserves enough of the familiar weekly news magazine format that it will probably not offend Newsweek’s more purist readers.

The paper stock is thicker and glossier. There are references throughout promoting content in The Daily Beast, which the magazine explains is “Newsweek’s website.” There is a feature called “Connecting the Dots,” an idea that came from Sidney Harman, who purchased Newsweek from the Washington Post Company last year. Mr. Harman is fond of using the phrase to explain what he believes Newsweek’s mission to its readers should be.

Newsweek now prints far more — and far larger — photos than it used to. The new issue has several two-page photo spreads. A new section toward the front of the magazine, called NewsBeast, provides commentary on events from the previous week. The magazine’s famous “Conventional Wisdom” column now appears there.

The bylines in the new Newsweek weren’t the only thing that had a ring of Tina Brown déjà vu to them. For the cover, Ms. Brown chose Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also graced the cover of Ms. Brown’s debut issue of Talk. The subject matter of the accompanying articles is quite different. For Talk, Ms. Clinton discussed the possible psychological origins of her husband’s infidelity. In Newsweek, the story emphasizes Ms. Clinton’s status as an emerging world leader.

Did somebody say "déjà vu"? As in "all over again," as Yogi would say?

Ms. Tina herself has an introductory piece called "A New Newsweek," accompanied by the, er, visual rendering at left. I bet the editor who plunked that in there is going to catch hell from the boss! Oh, wait.

I don't suppose Yogi made it into The New Newsweek. If you find one in your mailbox, let me know. Or I suppose you could buy one at your newsstand, if you're that worked up about it. If you do, be sure to let us know if you're feeling as if your dots are connected.

In fairness to Ms. Tina, she couldn't have kept all this secret forever. Could she? It's something to think about.

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Stop the presses! Ms. Tina Brown adds yet another magnificent beast to her media menagerie

With all the media studs Ms. Tina is assembling for The Daily Beast and the forthcoming revamped Newsweek, we must surely be witnessing a media juggernaut in the making, no?

"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. 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."

-- Andrew Sullivan, as quoted in a NYT "Media Decoder" piece

by Ken

Well, my goodness, Andrew, what is there to say except that every now and then, gosh darn it, dreams do come true?

I assume you've been keeping track of the succession of hires Ms. Tina Brown has been making for her new media entity, which will combine her current Daily Beast webzine with a revamped Newsweek to be under her editorial control as well. I'm not going to regale you with the list of media luminaries. Let Ms. Tina hire her own PR flacks.

But golly gee, Andrew Sullivan! Hard on the heels of the acquisition of (gasp) the Washington Post's "Howie the Hump" Kurtz, as you'll note in the following piece from the NYT's "Media Decoder" today. (Consult the on-site version for links.)

February 27, 2011, 10:31 PM

Andrew Sullivan Joins Daily Beast and Newsweek
By M. AMEDEO TUMOLILLO

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.

I trust that for DWT readers it's not necessary to pile on the snark regarding these two acquisitions. Andrew Sullivan is a very bright fellow, but "very bright" doesn't impress me in the absence of, well, something else. True, every now and then -- every 50th time out of the box? 100th? 500th? -- he uses that brightness to offer genuine insight on a topic, but I don't have the spare reading time to play those odds.

As for Howie the Hump, well, what is there to say? If he had been maybe 100 times as competent in his career at the Post he might have qualified as a disgrace. Of course the paper should have been profoundly ashamed of him, but it has long since lost any sense of shame it may once have possessed in its somewhat happier times. Actually, my favorite line in Mr. Tumolillo's breathless account is the idea that our Howie, in making the move to Ms. Tina's house of media, aspires to be "more of an entrepreneur online." Shake it, Howie baby!

From these thrilling announcements out of Ms. Tina's PR pantry, I have two takeaways -- one fairly conclusive, the other merely speculative.

(1) The conclusive one is that neither The Daily Beast nor the new Newsweek is meant for me. Which is A-OK by me. I'm already way overcommitted media-wise.

(2) The speculation is that Ms. Tina's new media empire may be headed for something less than blockbusterdom. I mean, Howie the Hump and Andrew "Look at Me!" Sullivan? If this were some 17-year-old whiz kid in, say, Nebraska making the leap from his high school newspaper to a national media presence, names like this might confer some measure of "credibility." But are there really more people out there than I'm imagining whose heartbeat is racing at the prospect of, um, still being able to read these humps, only now in The Daily Beast and Newsweek?

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