The Daily Beast fired Howard Kurtz.
Newsweek/Daily Beast chief Tina Brown tweeted on Thursday that the company had parted ways with Kurtz, the news organization's Washington bureau chief and writer of the media blog, Spin Cycle.
The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone, who recently reported about Kurtz's involvement with a little-known website and the questions his relationship raised, obtained a statement released by Brown. She said:
The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company. Under the direction of our newly named political director John Avlon we have added new momentum and authority to our Washington bureau with columnists such as Jon Favreau, Joshua Dubois and Stuart Stevens joining our outstanding DC team of Eleanor Clift, Daniel Klaidman, Michael Tomasky, Eli Lake, David Frum and Michelle Cottle - giving us one of the best politics teams in the business which was instrumental in this week’s Webby win for Best News site.
The news broke hours after The Daily Beast retracted an erroneous blog post Kurtz published about NBA star Jason Collins. Kurtz incorrectly accused Collins, the first openly gay male athlete in a major professional sport, of leaving out the fact that the NBA player was engaged to his former girlfriend at one point in time. In addition to including that fact in the op-ed he penned for Sports Illustrated that announced his coming out, Collins further discussed that he was previously engaged during his first TV interview on ABC News.
Kurtz also serves as the host of CNN's Sunday media show "Reliable Sources." While CNN has not yet commented on Kurtz's firing, a source told TVNewser that "Kurtz’s current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last."
Kurtz later tweeted about his departure.