"Kurtz had a string of high-profile mistakes on his record and that had become a source of embarrassment for The Daily Beast."

And "he commanded a hefty paycheck, despite turning out fewer scoops than in the past," write  Dylan Byers and Katie Glueck, citing anonymous sources at the Daily Beast and CNN.

“People here have been groaning about Howie for years,” a source at CNN said. “He’s like the Dick Morris of media critics — just shoddy and out of the game.”...

“It became clear to folks here that Howie had a lot of other commitments, and that that wasn’t working,” a Daily Beast source said....

Despite having his own show on CNN, Kurtz has dedicated much of his recent time to a new venture: a website called “The Daily Download,” where he regularly appears in video segments with the site’s founder and editor Lauren Ashburn. That preoccupation seems to have taken a toll on Kurtz’s attention span and focus....

”What would I go to this site for? As another place Howard Kurtz does his able thing on the week’s media news? Okay, but why does he need that? And why do we? He’s got the Daily Beast and CNN: plenty of platform,” Jay Rosen, the New York University journalism professor, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “Daily Download resists understanding.”

"Resists understanding" is a nice phrase.