Add the Washington Post’s respected media columnist Howard Kurtz to the list of prominent formerly print journalists who’ve dabbled in cable and are now jumping the print-publication ship to work for one publications:
The Daily Beast today announces that Howard Kurtz will join as Washington Bureau Chief. In this new role, Kurtz will oversee the two-year-old site’s coverage of Washington and will report and write regularly on politics, media, and the intersection of the two.
Kurtz, who won renown as a media and investigative reporter for The Washington Post, writes a must-read weekly media column and daily blog for the Post. He will continue to host the weekly CNN media program Reliable Sources—the longest-running media show on television. He is the author of five books, including The New York Times bestseller Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine. A 29-year veteran of The Washington Post, Kurtz previously covered Congress and the Justice Department and has also served as the paper’s New York Bureau Chief. He is a winner of the National Press Club Award for Media Criticism.
Tina Brown, editor in chief of The Daily Beast, said, “I have great respect for Howard as a journalist and newsbreaker, but I admire him most of all for his understanding of media and politics as the story of our era. He is that rare reporter with a metabolism that outpaces the frenetic subjects he covers. I am excited that he will be a driving force in The Daily Beast’s coverage of this upcoming midterm election and for many election cycles to come.”
Of his new role at The Daily Beast, Kurtz said, “I’ve wanted to work with Tina Brown forever—well, for a long time—and I’m incredibly impressed by the energy and creativity of The Daily Beast staff. After a lifetime in newspapers, I’m ready for the challenge of fast-paced online journalism.”
Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal said, “Howard is a top-tier news-breaker and reporter who, even in print, operates at an Internet pace. He brings to The Daily Beast a fabulous range that spans from the White House to Jon Stewart and George Clooney.”
In recent weeks three publications with big online presences have become new homes to journalists who in most (but not all) cases left the print media to direct the bulk of their efforts to online journalism: The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post and the National Journal. All of these taken together when viewed against the context of ailing newspapers and magazines are further signs of a shift in journalism in the 21st century. Print are publications scramble to try and come up with new business models and people who spent most of their careers in print see younger readers and readers in general getting more of their news online.
One question continues to be: the impact on journalism schools. With these recent hires (including ex-Newsweer-er Howard Fineman to The Huffington Post) it’s clear many feel the place to be to to perhaps be more stable is working for an online infooutlet.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.