Tech mogul Barry Diller was one of the first billionaires to experiment with digital journalism in the 2000s. He teamed up with longtime editor Tina Brown to create The Daily Beast, a messy tabloid for the burgeoning online age.
Now perhaps the 14-year career of Mr. Diller as the owner of the internet muckraker.
IAC, the holding company founded by Mr. Diller that owns digital properties including People, Better Homes and Gardens and Southern Living, has hired investment bank Whisper Advisors to investigate the sale of The Daily Beast, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
The sales process is in its early stages, people said, and it may not lead to a deal. The price The Daily Beast might charge in a sale is not clear.
An IAC spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Daily Beast has achieved journalistic success and published firsts on the media industry and political and national security issues over the years. News broke last year that Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Georgia, was the father of children he had not previously mentioned publicly.
But it hasn’t achieved the financial success of some of Mr. Diller’s other investments. The site has been a small part of Mr. Diller’s sprawling digital empire, operating independently of his other publishing brands, with its own CEO and management team.
Like other digital media companies, The Daily Beast has turned to digital subscriptions in recent years to grow its business. The company charges $4.99 a month for unlimited access to its coverage, while offering an ad-supported crossword puzzle five times a week. It also takes a portion of online sales for products it recommends on Scouted, a section of the site dedicated to Internet shopping.
It may be an inopportune time to investigate a sale for Mr. Diller, whose record in digital media includes successful spin-offs from dating conglomerate Match Group, travel company Expedia and video service Vimeo. Media stocks fell sharply over the past year amid a broader market slumber as skittish investors grew wary of the advertising and video streaming companies.
The Daily Beast’s aggressive reporting has also made it the occasional target of lawsuits, which could complicate a sale. In 2020, Gawker’s former editor-in-chief sued The Daily Beast after the site published an article about Gawker’s tumultuous relaunch. The Daily Beast has said his article was accurate and the lawsuit is still going through the courts.
Despite its relatively small staff – it has a newsroom of less than 100 journalists – The Daily Beast draws a sizeable audience. According to measurement agency Comscore, the site attracted about 15 million visitors in November.
The Daily Beast has also developed a reputation for narrative reporting. In 2020, the site published a popular thread detailing a years-long plot to defraud McDonald’s by manipulating its Monopoly game chosen by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Pearl Street Films for about $1 million.
