Major Mainstream Outlet Parts Ways With Prominent Journalist After Blog Post About Gay NBA Player

AP

Online news outlet The Daily Beast has dropped prominent journalist and media critic Howard Kurtz, hours after retracting a post he wrote about gay NBA player Jason Collins.

".@thedailybeast & @HowardKurtz have parted company...we wish him well," editor in chief Tina Brown posted to Twitter on Thursday.

“The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company," Brown said in a full statement. "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.”

Earlier Thursday, the Daily Beast issued a retraction to Kurtz's post about Collins, who earlier this week became the first publicly gay athlete in a major U.S. sporting team. The full retraction is below:

The Daily Beast has retracted a May 2, 2013, blog post by Howard Kurtz titled “Jason Collins’ Other Secret.” The piece contained several errors, resulting in a misleading characterization of NBA player Collins and the story he co-wrote in Sports Illustrated in which he came out as gay.

In that piece, Collins wrote, “When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue."

In his original blog post, Kurtz incorrectly stated that Collins “didn’t come clean” about the engagement. In an amended version, Kurtz added that Collins “downplayed” the engagement and “didn’t dwell on it.”

The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz’s error—and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement.

Kurtz is also the host of "Reliable Sources" on CNN.

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