Barry Diller Says Buying 'Newsweek' Was a Mistake

IAC Chairman Barry Diller says that merging Newsweek with The Daily Beast in November 2010 was "a mistake," and that he does not have great expectations for its future.

In an interview with Bloomberg (above), Diller said that printing a single magazine — particularly a newsweekly — is a "fool's errand" in the current news environment.

"There are some one-off magazines that have no competition essentially in their field, luxury magazines, advertisers must advertise in them," Diller said. "But for a news magazine — which is a bit of an odd phrase these days, newsweekly, we have news instantly — it was not possible to print it any longer. So we said, OK, we'll offer a digital product, we've got a very, very, very solid newsroom, and we'll see." Read more...