Adweek.com
Tina Brown says The Daily Beast website is on track to be profitable this year, but Lucia Moses points out that getting the combined NewsBeast into the black by early 2013 -- Daily Beast backer Barry Diller insists that's possible -- will be a daunting task. "If that task takes years and Newsweek can’t find a way to regain the relevance weekly newsmagazines have lost since the explosion of news on the Internet, then Diller and Jane Harman, Sidney Harman’s widow, could reach the point where they finally decide to cut bait," she writes. "The idea that NewsBeast could ever become a successful operation has always seemed far-fetched." On the bright side, Newsweek's newsstand sales are up under Tina Brown, "but newsstand sales are only 3 percent of the magazine’s circulation, and they don’t make it much money," notes Moses. Reed Phillips, managing partner at media investment bank DeSilva+Phillips, tells her:

I don’t think it’s a quick turnaround. Advertisers are going to take time to get comfortable that Newsweek is on a solid foundation. And the ad market’s jittery already. I think the biggest challenge is, it has to be redefined in a way that has to be engaging with readers. New York magazine did it. With the talent The Daily Beast has, there’s anticipation that that can be done. And it needs more of an edge compared to what it was in the past, before they bought it.

Brown said last November that it will take "a while" for her to make on Newsweek, and that the print/website combo is "a good model." She told WWD.com: “You’re seeing this with Bloomberg and BusinessWeek, and Politico and its newspaper, and now you’re going to see the Daily Beast and Newsweek.”

Adweek.com
Tina Brown "literally will order up double what she needs, so the cutting-room floor is getting very cluttered,” one recently departed Web staffer tells Lucia Moses. “She has no idea of the ripple effect of the process.” Howard Kurtz defends Brown, calling her a “high-energy editor” whose nonstop pace can be “dizzying” but who brings a “dynamism” to the newsroom. “I think Tina has a realistic sense of how to turn this ship around with the resources she has,” he says. || Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports Brown has recruited U.K.-born historian, New Yorker magazine critic and Columbia University professor Simon Schama to write for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. "I look forward to writing about everything from politics to Picasso, barbecue to baseball–all in the same article should occasion call for it," he says in a statement. Schama will continue to write for the New Yorker.

Adweek.com
Brekke Fletcher, who quit as Maxim managing editor last December to join Tina Brown's operation, is taking a position at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ. magazine, reports Lucia Moses. Taking Fletcher's place at Newsweek/Daily Beast is Tom Weber, a former Wall Street Journal columnist and Smart Money online editor. He currently covers technology for NewsBeast.
> Fletcher in 2009: I'd like to create magazines for the Kindle

Politico.com
John Solomon, who joined the Center for Public Integrity as executive editor last November, has resigned to become editor of news and investigations at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. The former Washington Times executive editor met with Tina Brown last fall and gave her some advice on the merger of the publications, reports Keach Hagey. Solomon tells her:

[Brown] gave me a call when she was coming to Washington. I was flattered when she called, and I realized that this is a person who believes that the best days of journalism are ahead of us, not behind us. There are so few people at the top of journalism who believe that.

Howard Kurtz, who has reported on Solomon’s career moves over the years, was also at the meeting with Brown. (She hired the former Washington Post media reporter last October.) (more...)

Politico
National political correspondent Lois Romano has been at the Washington Post for nearly 29 years. She tells Romenesko:

I've had a wonderful ride at the Post, and I feel that I’m not leaving anything but going to a new and different opportunity. The decision was driven by a desire to stretch on another platform, and the chance work with an editor with an extraordinary record - Tina Brown. I will be writing on a wide variety of topics- politics, trends, women’s issues.

The Post memo is after the jump. (more...)

Mashable.com
Barry Diller also complained at South By Southwest about Rupert Murdoch's The Daily being "impossible to download" and said he had no plans for a similar, iPad-only product. "I don't know why you'd do an original product only for anything. || More on Diller's talk. || Felix Dennis: Tina Brown and people who are like her are indestructible because they don’t care about their failure.