Newsweek/Daily Beast Names Baba Shetty as CEO, Replacing Colvin

Newsweek/Daily Beast Co., the news business controlled by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), named Baba Shetty as its next chief executive officer, replacing Stephen Colvin.

Shetty, chief strategy and media officer at Boston-based advertising firm Hill Holliday, will start in three weeks and report to Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown and the Newsweek/Daily Beast board, the company said today. Colvin, who joined the Daily Beast before its merger with Newsweek in 2011, is leaving for Lerer Ventures, a New York investment firm.

The Daily Beast was founded in 2008 by Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and Diller, a billionaire who owns a range of media and Internet properties. The 2011 Newsweek merger was part of an agreement with the late Sidney Harman, who acquired the magazine from Washington Post Co. for $1 and the assumption of liabilities.

IAC acquired a controlling stake in Newsweek/Daily Beast Co. in late May after Harman’s family trust stopped making capital contributions to the joint venture.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in New York at sfrier1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net