Howard Kurtz, the writer whose piece on Jason Collins drew backlash earlier this week, has been fired from The Daily Beast.
Kurtz alleged in his story that Collins, who has just come out as a gay man, didn’t come clean about his engagement to a woman. He also made several errors regarding Collins’ essay in Sports Illustrated, then updated his article to amend his original stance and ended up just making readers angry.
Collins’ piece read, “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.”
The Daily Beast retracted the article and released a statement about Kurtz’s errors, saying, “The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz’s error — and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement.”
Since coming out in the most recent edition of Sports Illustrated, Collins is being recognized as the first openly gay professional athlete in the U.S. The story went viral this week, but Kurtz’s blog post picked up major media attention and may have had a hand in his termination. Kurtz had this to say on Twitter:
“I’ve enjoyed my time at the Daily Beast but as we began to move in different directions, both sides agreed it was best to part company,” he wrote. “This was in the works for some time, but want to wish all my colleagues continued success with a terrific website. Newsweek and the Beast are great brands, but the time had come for me to move on to other opportunities.”