On July 11 of last year, I arrived to work at the MailOnline newsroom in New York City and saw Keith Poole, our managing editor, standing outside smoking a cigarette. Even from a hundred yards away, it was clear that Poole—a generally pleasant Englishman who was the managing editor of the Daily Mail at the time—was agitated. It didn't take a detective to figure out why.

Elite Daily, a website that describes itself as "The Voice of Generation Y," has been purchased for $47 million by DMG Media, the "global media brand" that arose out of the Victorian-era tabloid Daily Mail.