WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- U.S. journalist, author and CNN "Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz has been fired by The Daily Beast, website publisher Tina Brown said Thursday.
"@thedailybeast & @HowardKurtz have parted company...we wish him well," Brown said on Twitter.
Kurtz, the news and opinion site's Washington bureau chief, was let go after The Daily Beast retracted an erroneous blog post Kurtz posted about Washington Wizards basketball center Jason Collins, who Monday became the first active male professional athlete in a major North American team sport to publicly come out as gay.
Kurtz incorrectly accused Collins of leaving out the fact that he was at one point engaged to former girlfriend Carolyn Moos.
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But Collins included that detail in his Sports Illustrated op-ed piece that announced his coming out.
"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," Collins wrote.
Collins also discussed his engagement with ABC News.
Kurtz, who said on BuzzFeed he didn't think his analysis "was out of bounds," wrote on Twitter Thursday he "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."
"This was in the works for some time, but want to wish all my colleagues continued success with a terrific website," he wrote "Newsweek and the Beast are great brands, but the time had come for me to move on to other opportunities."
A source at CNN told the TV Newser blog Thursday Kurtz's current CNN deal would probably be his last.
