When talks of a merger between Newsweek and The Daily Beast fell off the table two weeks ago, the media cited everything from personality differences to conflicts over how to share editorial and business responsibilities. 

Those problems were swept aside Thursday night when Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown announced a 50-50 merger between the 77-year-old magazine and the 2-year-old website, which news outlets tonight are still calling "fledgling."

Brown will serve as editor-in-chief of both publications. The company will be called the Newsweek Daily Beast Company.

"Some weddings take longer to plan than others," Brown wrote in a post on the Daily Beast website. 

Newsweek, which the same news outlets have called "failing" and "struggling," has rapidly lost circulation numbers, advertisers and staff members. The company struggled to replace its editor, even after the August sale of the magazine from the Washington Post company to business mogul Sydney Harman for $1, plus the publication's debt. 

Newsweek's website had 3.9 million unique visitors in September, according to the Washington Post and industry tracker Compete.com. The Daily Beast said it had almost 5 million unique monthly visitors, although Compete estimated its total at 1.55 million in the same month.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times says of the merger: "The arrangement is in many ways a win-win for both sides." Peters says Harman will gain "a respected editor who will generate buzz around a magazine that many in the publishing world had left for dead," and Brown will gain an editing job at a well-known publication.

The issues cited during the earlier attempt to merge the two publications haven't gone away, some outlets say.

From Forbes: "It seems it took the near-derailment of talks for each side to realize how much it needs the other. Harman has had trouble recruiting a big-name editor to run Newsweek, while Diller has said publicly he thought the Daily Beast needed a print component no matter what."

"In an admittedly challenging time, this merger provides the ideal combination of established journalism authority and bright, bristling website savvy," Harman said in a statement.

Staff reporter Laura J. Nelson can be reached here.