NewsBeast Loses Managing Editor

It’s one step forward, one step back for Tina Brown’s Newsweek, which has lost a key hire even as its ad pages get a shot in the arm.

Brekke Fletcher, the Maxim managing editor who joined Brown's operation in December, is leaving after just five months on the job. She had the same title at Newsweek/Daily Beast combo. Brown’s rep says Fletcher is taking a position at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ. magazine.

Taking her place at the NewsBeast will be Tom Weber, another recent Brown hire who, incidentally, came from the Journal, where he was an editor and columnist and online editor of sibling pub Smart Money.

On the upside, the magazine will carry 32 ad pages in next week’s issue, the most it’s had in over a year. Apple, Panasonic, and Marriott are among new clients. While Brown’s reenergized Newsweek has been selling well on newsstands [1], advertisers have generally been taking a wait-and-see approach [2] since it combined with The Daily Beast and got the Brown redesign treatment earlier this spring.