‘The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz Have Parted Company,’ Tina Brown Says After Retracting Item on Gay NBA Player

One of Washington’s best-known media critics will no longer be published at The Daily Beast, after the site retracted an item in which Howard Kurtz mischaracterized an article by pro basketball player Jason Collins.

Kurtz, who spent nearly 30 years at The Washington Post before joining The Daily Beast in 2010, wrote Wednesday that Collins, in a Sports Illustrated article Monday declaring himself gay, had neglected to mention his previous heterosexual relationships, including an engagement to former WNBA player Carolyn Moos.

In fact, the eighth paragraph of Collins’s article said, “When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged.” Collins and Moos dated for several years before their breakup in 2009; she told TMZ Monday she never suspected Collins was gay: ”It’s very emotional for me as a woman to have invested 8 years in my dream to have a husband, soul mate, and best friend in him. So this is all hard to understand.”

Wednesday afternoon, Kurtz published an article headlined, “Jason Collins’ Other Hidden Secret,” which said the NBA player “left one little part out,” namely his engagement to Moos. Kurtz was immediately called out by David A. Graham, politics editor of The Atlantic:

Kurtz was also the subject of criticism from Dylan Byers of Politico and John Nolte of Breitbart.com, and was blasted at The Huffington Post and Twitchy.com, among other sites. Kurtz amended the article to say Collins had “downplayed” his former heterosexual relationships, but Thursday afternoon, The Daily Beast issued a full retraction of the article. A couple hours later, Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown issued a statement to Politico: “The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company.”

Kurtz’s hiring at The Daily Beast made headlines for the online venture headed by Brown, a famed editor for such magazines as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The Daily Beast, which merged with Newsweek magazine in 2010, reportedly lost $30 million in 2011 and last year ceased print publication of Newsweek. Kurtz, who hosts a weekend show called Reliable Sources on the third-place cable news network CNN, was believed to be one of the highest-paid contributors to the Daily Beast. His salary was rumored to be as high as $600,000 in 2011, although The Daily Beast denied that report.

Collins’s public declaration of his homosexuality — the first NBA player to “come out” as gay — was widely reported and elicited praise Monday from President Obama.

 

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