3/22/13

Is the Daily Beast Kosher?

Used to be Newsweek, now it is the Daily Beast. It is a news site not an animal. So it cannot be kosher in the narrow sense of the word, that is permissible for physical consumption. Is it permissible to read the Daily Beast? We suppose it is kosher.

Here are some of the salient points about the site, mainly from Wikipedia (with our comments):
  • The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC (Barry Diller, the chairman). Edward Felsenthal, a former Wall Street Journal editor, was the site's executive editor, and Stephen Colvin was its president. (We believe that all three men are Jewish.)
  • The name of the site is derived from that of one of the fictional newspapers in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop. (Not all the postings are fictional.)
  • On November 12, 2010, The Daily Beast and Newsweek announced a merger deal, creating a combined company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. (Losing $ millions each year.)
  • One of the features of The Daily Beast is the "Cheat Sheet", billed as "must reads from all over". Published daily, the "Cheat Sheet" offers a selection of articles from online news outlets on popular stories. The "Cheat Sheet" includes brief summaries of the article, and a link to read the full text of the article on the website of its provider. (Sounds like an Internet site from 1997 all over again.)
  • Since launch, the site has introduced additional sections, including a video "Cheat Sheet", "Book Beast", "Hungry Beast", and "Sexy Beast", a Fashion and Entertainment section. (Theme is beginning to wear thin.)
  • The site's motto is "Read this Skip That" (Kinda like a medieval church index.)
The "Rabbi Beast" section (just joking, it's not a section yet) offers us 60 rabbis who now can proudly say they were chosen best by the Beast:
Read it or skip it. Some best rabbis' names are missing.

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