Had you ever visited The Daily Beast’s site (not a good idea without a strong stomach), a recent article by Tony Ortega—a child sex trafficking advocate turned champion of psychiatric torture by electrocution—might have startled your screen.
You’d be pardoned if you wondered how anyone in their right mind would pay such an individual to shovel the snow off their outhouse, let alone author an article. But when you recognize said article as one championing a human rights abuse, things become much clearer.
To discover the deeper truth of how this came to be, we must understand the past heritage and present pickle of The Daily Beast.
Coles was channeling not just the periodical’s heritage but its very essence—what makes The Daily Beast The Daily Beast. In a word: slime.
To put it bluntly, The Daily Beast has fallen on hard times. It turns out that no one is really interested in reading garbage (who knew?). In a move described as “financial discipline to reposition and reset the Beast,” 60 percent of its unionized journalists just accepted a buyout package, and another eight nonunion staff members, including editors, were laid off.
So let’s recap. The Daily Beast is in so much financial trouble that it’s not just bleeding writers, it’s quite literally amputating the newsroom. What, pray tell, might they think will save this sinking ship?
Reaching lower.
Joanna Coles, one of the remaining bosses of an empty newsroom, for example, floated the following ideas for “coverage”:
- A think piece speculating on the possibility of Donald Trump getting raped in prison.
- An in-depth essay on the most obese members of Congress.
- An article about farts in court.
Coles was channeling not just the periodical’s heritage but its very essence—what makes The Daily Beast The Daily Beast. In a word: slime. Because The Beast needs to find a new audience: one with values as barren and decrepit as their own. And their desperate need to generate pennies for clicks has led them to mining the very bottom of the cesspool with a net.
Of course, if you’re trolling for garbage, one name immediately comes to mind for a fisherman: Tony Ortega, a man best known for serving as “attack dog” for Village Voice Media’s Backpage.com, the largest sex-and-slave online conduit on Earth until it was shut down in 2018 by the FBI, with its executives convicted.
Ortega some time ago began writing freelance anti-Scientology propaganda for The Daily Beast, in and amongst The Beast’s other seedy, sordid tabloid fare. (Remember, pennies for clicks, although even that was a radical overpayment.)
Coles, having inherited a mess, is now desperate. And Tony Ortega, skilled at making appearances in the sewage holes of the internet, found a new cause célèbre. No longer satisfied with simply championing the rape of young children, Ortega penned an article offering a passionate defense of electroshock, the “treatment” described by the United Nations, media and courts of law as torture. The Beast published the article in the “Entertainment” section. (The ancient Romans also classified torture as entertainment; the consumption of Christians by lions was a popular spectator sport.)
So it’s easy to see the pieces fall into place. The Daily Beast is desperate for cash and has no standards at all. Tony Ortega is the ideal poison pen garbage auteur for such a shameful endeavor.
With whole chunks of its newsroom being jettisoned, the downfall of The Daily Beast is a cautionary tale for other media platforms hit hard by the plunging economics of the digital era. Some have been tempted to sell their souls to stay afloat. Some already have. But it’s a losing formula. People, curiously enough, prefer the truth. And the truth is, The Daily Beast can only go so low before it hits bottom.
With Tony Ortega’s help, it just has. Do you hear that scraping sound?
So here’s another story for The Daily Beast “Entertainment” section:
Sit back and enjoy your popcorn while you watch the escape tunnel The Beast is digging become its own grave.
