The Daily Beast announced a merger with Newsweek, the money-hemorrhaging news magazine sold for one dollar to HI FI magnate Sydney Harman.

The 50/50 merger suggests the obvious--The Daily Beast is also worth about a dollar.

The Daily Beast has been losing readership. Research firm Compete says the number of unique visitors to the TheDailyBeast.com has dropped from 2.18 million in June to 1.55 million in September -- a fall of nearly 30%. Rival Huffington Post has 12.2 million unique visitors. Newsweek relies heavily on MSNBC.com for online traffic; it is not certain whether that will continue after the merger.

Ironically, the Daily Beast believes it can improve its fortunes by creating a print edition, which may explain its affinity for Newsweek.

Print. Really?

One of the inescapable realities of the modern media dynamic is that readers can move from website to website in a click, the effect of which is that we don't go to a single source for news (which is what a print news magazine is...) but visit a site because a particular article has drawn our attention. In effect, the current model is networked, distributed and diverse, not concentrated, homogeneous and brand-loyal.

Ironically, while the Beast is floundering, even on-line news magazines deemed 'successful' are far from being profitable. Politico, Huffington Post and Pajamas Media are all heavily subsided by wealth patrons.

A merger is not a bad idea, but let's face it--print is dead. The merger should be between on-line media and cablenews. That's some serious synergy.