Tina Brown

What are people saying about David Gregory, NBC News' heir presumptive for Tim Russert's job on Meet the Press? Felix Gillette talks to some who say things like, “He’s got great instincts when it comes to what area of stories to probe...I don’t think there’s much of a learning curve when it comes to politics. He knows that world as well as anyone. He gets great stuff out of people" and "He can be an aggressive questioner—as he showed in the White House Press Room. He was a dramatic and good and persistent questioner. And he’s not afraid to be disliked.”

Is Tina Brown "like Schindler, in a skirt-suit"? That's what John Koblin calls her when it comes to bringing laid off writers into her Daily Beast. But what can they hope to be paid? Plus: January Groans: Mags' Lean Month Gets Downright Gaunt.

Can a 26-year-old consultant who took Columbia's Publishing Course and worked for a time at Little, Brown save publishing? Leon Neyfakh meets Eric Wolff, who says, "Truth is, there isn’t a whole lot of reason for a big media company to own a book company unless it wants to be in that business... Corporations generally want growth stories, and there’s no growth in books.”

Plus: Missbehave's new editor... Superstar avatars... Murdoch the Magnificent.

On the day the perennially troubled Radar magazine folded, its editor Maer Roshan got an email from an old friend, Tina Brown, with whom he’d worked at her own sunken ship, Talk.

“Maer my darling, I’m grieving so terribly,” she wrote in her Masterpiece Theatre trill. “I’m running into a meeting, but do nothing either yourself or with your staff until you’ve spoken to us. I will call you as soon as I can.”

Maybe Barry Diller’s mammoth IAC Corporation, with whom Ms. Brown launched her aggregator Web site, the Daily Beast, was prepping a bailout plan for the magazine!

Or was she looking for spiked pieces she could use to add original content to her own online magazine?

These days, Ms.  read more »

If you wanted to wipe out the American media establishment in one blow, you might have targeted the Grand Ballroom on the third floor of the Plaza hotel at around 9 a.m. on Nov. 12.

The Foursquare Conference was organized by media mogul Steve Rattner’s Quadrangle Partners, and had the kind of exclusive list Mr. Rattner is known for. Barry Diller attended the conference, as did Lachlan Murdoch, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and Tribune chief Sam Zell.

It was just the place for Jeff Jarvis, the tall 54-year-old professorial-looking guy who was looking intently through unfashionable glasses at the participants of a panel discussion on the state of American media, from his perch up front.  read more »

The National Book Awards tried to glam things up, with mixed results. 

Narciso Rodriguez told us about Michelle Obama's controversial Election Night dress at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards. 

We caught up with the MisShapes at Christian Siriano's birthday party at Citrine. 

At the re-dedication of the Bridge Formerly Known as Triborough, we discovered that Nancy Pelosi isn't one for frivolous questions (but Martha Stewart is!). 

We faced the new media reality and took advantage of the complimentary burgers at Tina Brown's Daily Beast launch party in the Meatpacking District. 

We also learned about Out magazine's recession-proof readership and searched in vain for James Franco at the annual "Out 100" celebration. (We found him a few days later at a screening of Milk.)

"We're having a lot more fun than we did on Liberty Island!" said Tina Brown, the czarina of The Daily Beast, at her Web site's launch party last night in the Meatpacking District.

No, it didn't quite have the extravagance, say, of that 1999 Talk launch party on Liberty Island, where more than 800 movie stars and celebrities—invites went out to everyone from Henry Kissinger to Madonna—mingled and got drunk in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Well, those were different times.

Ms. Brown's launch party last night was at... Pop Burger on Ninth Avenue. Maybe this is the New Media reality.

At this party, Harvey Weinstein didn't make the guest list, but "Fast Eddie" Felsenthal, the executive editor of The Daily Beast, sure did (and that was his nickname at The Wall Street Journal, we're told!). And instead of nearly a thousand arriving by ferry, this one had a few dozen people who had to take the ACE or the L. Everyone went home by a quarter to nine.

There were free sliders.  read more »

When we ran into former Project Runway contestant Jay McCarroll at The Humane Society of the United States' Cool Vs. Cruel Ceremony at the Bowery Hotel last night, we had to ask him about the little miscommunication he--or rather his impostor--had with a reporter at Tina Brown's the Daily Beast.

Last week, the Daily Beast ran an article that was supposed to display concept drawings by former Project Runway contestants for Michelle Obama's inaugural gowns. By mistake, a reporter named Hailey Eber contacted a Jay McCarrol, a musician in Canada, instead of Jay McCarroll, the Project Runway contestant. Mr. McCarrol, the musician, went along with it, getting a friend to do a drawing of a gown and leading Ms. Eber to believe it was authentic. The drawing was posted alongside other designs, but was soon found out for what it was--a hoax--by the Smoking Gun.

"I’m over it now. It’s guess it's funny," said Mr. McCarroll, the real reality show contestant. "I guess it keeps my name in the spotlight, doesn’t it? And I didn’t have to do anything—zero!"  read more »

Barely a thousand hours old and The Daily Beast, already has its own mini scandal.

According to a Smoking Gun post headlined Tina Brown In Beastly Hoax, Tina Brown and Barry Diller's Web site ran an article that purported to show concept drawings for Michelle Obama's inaugural gown by Project Runway contestants last week.

The only problem: One of the drawings contributed was fake, a prank done by a Canadian musician named Jay McCarrol mistakenly contacted by the reporter, Hailey Eber, who thought she was emailing with Jay McCarroll, one of the design show's breakout stars. Mr. McCarrol, who is not a fashion designer, had a friend do some sketches which he sent Ms. Eber, in a prank that calls to mind The Baffler's Great Grunge Hoax from 1992, in which a shop owner invented hilariously fake 'grunge' terms which ran as part of a New York Times' article by Rick Marin. The lexicon featured the immortal—and frankly, still viable—phrase, "bloated bag of bloatation," which supposedly meant "drunk."  read more »

We channeled the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe alongside Josh Lucas, David Schwimmer, Arden Wohl, and Mary-Kate Olsen at the Accompanied Literary Society Halloween party.

The art world remembered Robert Rauschenberg at a Coalition for the Homeless benefit. 

We spent an anxious Election Eve with Graydon Carter, Tina Brown, Salman Rushdie, Regis Philbin, and Nora Ephron at the New York Public Library’s Library Lions benefit. 

   read more »

On Wednesday evening, a small and somewhat exhausted crowd gathered at the newly refurbished Oak Room to celebrate a screening of After the Party, Australian filmmakers Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley's documentary about the life of the novelist, crime reporter, and Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne. Mr. Dunne, who is currently battling cancer, was unable to make the screening because of a scheduled surgery. His presence was distinctly felt, however, with friends like Nora Ephron and MSNBC's Dan Abrams complimenting the film and eagerly sharing stories about the legendary writer.

We also spoke with editor Harry Evans and author Ian McEwan, who were seated across from each other and deep in conversation when we approached.  read more »

At the New York Public Library’s Library Lions benefit on Monday, Nov. 3, most guests were eager to get home at a reasonable hour—since polls around the city were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. the next day, and as several guests pointed out, open bars at benefits tend to make it difficult to get anywhere on time the following day.

“I’m going to vote early, probably right after my show,” said Live with Regis and Kelly host Regis Philbin, who was one of the earlier departers along with wife, Joy. “I’m just so glad it’s over! This has been the longest election.  read more »

Today on The Daily Beast, Tina Brown and Barry Diller's literally hundreds of hours old Web site, Randi Zuckerberg sallies forth a bold, truly shocking statement: It Must Be Stopped: Hipster Lip Dub Videos. (Insert your own exclamation points interspersed with number 1s here.)

This is perhaps the second most powerful statement by the site since last week when The Beast stood athwart tooth-whitening yelling Stop. But this critique, aimed at young people who film themselves and their friends lip-syncing pop songs and post the clips on YouTube and other sites, is somewhat confusing.   read more »

If you worked at The New York Sun and now you're looking for some part-time work, send in your clips to Tina Brown!

The Sun has been closed for three weeks, and in that time, The Daily Beast has hit the 500-hour mark. It needs to be fed.

In recent weeks, ex-Sun staffers who have contributed include:

• Ira Stoll
• Kate Taylor
• Julie Satow
• Ross Goldberg
• Benjamin Sarlin
• Russell Berman

It's probably not a coincidence that a former editor at The Sun, Nicholas Wapshott, is a senior editor at The Beast now.

Sure, it's well past its buzzy first 100 hours, but that doesn't mean there can't be more coverage of Tina Brown and Barry Diller's three-week-old don't- call-it-a-news-aggregator site, The Daily Beast.

In today's New York Times, Tim Arango offers a dual (duel?) profile of Ms. Brown and her aggregating sister-in-arms, Arianna Huffington. (And yesterday's Times Magazine featured an interview with Christopher Buckley by Deborah Solomon, but that was simply to fill a quota since, it had been nearly a week since Mr. Buckley was written about in The Caucus, the 'Style' section, Week in Review or Op-Ed.)  read more »

Last night, we learned that The View's token conservative hostess, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, will join Sarah Palin on the stump in Florida this weekend. The move promises to be beneficial for everyone involved--Ms. Hasselbeck will have the opportunity to stand alongside her idol in a semi-official capacity, Ms. Palin will pick up a few tips on how to weather liberal attacks, and the sight of the adorable pair frolicking down the campaign trail will surely be enough to inspire any wavering (straight male) Republicans to stick with the ticket come Nov. 4.

But did Ms. Palin have something else in mind when she invited the former Survivor contestant to join her this weekend? It seems she may have been looking for career advice.  read more »

While we had him on the phone talking about Rupert Murdoch, we thought we'd ask Michael Wolff what he thought of The Daily Beast, the new Web site from Tina Brown that is in plain competition with Newser.com, the news aggregator site that Mr. Wolff started last year.

Mr. Wolff first shared his thoughts on The Daily Beast back in April, when he told Gawker that he didn't expect much out of Ms. Brown because last he'd heard she didn't know how to check her email.

He was no gentler today.

"I think it's preposterous," Mr. Wolff said.  read more »

Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, has responded to Christopher Buckley's announcement on Tina Brown and Barry Diller's Daily Beast that he was "fired," as the story's URL shows, or "sacked," as its headline read until it was recently changed to "Buckley Bows Out of National Review." (Buzz moves fast, and as The Times David Carr wrote roughly 300 hours ago, "Given Ms. Brown’s reputation for frantically changing everything in the final hours of closing every magazine she has edited, perhaps a medium that absorbs — indeed, requires — constant reiteration will suit her.")  read more »

Jim Romenesko—and just about every media site possible—linked to a story by the Philadelphia Daily News' Dan Gross that says his paper's parent company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tina Brown and Barry Diller's nearly 200-hour-old Web site The Daily Beast, claiming that its logo is "potentially trademark-infringing" with that of the Daily News.

Mr. Gross quotes the letter (which an unnamed spokesperson for The Daily Beast says was not received) as saying the logo is "virtually identical in shape, color, font and style to our own Daily News logo."

Apparently there's a serious risk that "our readers could easily be duped into thinking that your Web site is somehow affiliated" with the paper.

That seems unlikely because of—to quote Ms. Brown's already famous launch-day Q&A—"Sensibility, darling."  read more »

On Monday, as you no doubt already know, Tina Brown and Barry Diller launched The Daily Beast, a Web site that promises to "sift" and "curate" the unruly Internet.

Ms. Brown noted in a launch Q&A that her site would not be a boring old news aggregator, since sifting and curating are very different verbs from aggregating. In that Q&A, Ms. Brown trumpeted her new staff, including, "Edward Felsenthal, our executive editor, came from the Wall Street Journal, as did our managing editor, Jane Spencer. Senior editors Bryan Curtis and Nicholas Wapshott came from Slate and the Sun, home page editor Henry Seltzer from USmagazine.  read more »

Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke has weighed in on Tina Brown and Barry Diller's newly-launched Web site, The Daily Beast.

Ms. Finke's succinct summation of the site calls to mind the scene in This is Spinal Tap in which director Marty DeBergi recites a "merely a two-word review" of the band's album Shark Sandwich.

It should be noted Ms. Finke called The Huffington Post, "the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it’s the disastrous clone of Tina Brown’s Talk, JFK Jr.’s George or Maer Roshan’s Radar."

So, The Daily Beast might have a chance yet.

Tina Brown and Barry Diller's new Web site, The Daily Beast, has launched. In a Q&A, Ms. Brown explains why her site is different from other news aggregators like The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, Newser, Brijit, et al.:

The Daily Beast doesn't aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. We're as much about what's not there as what is. And we freshen the stream with a good helping of our own original content from a wonderfully diverse group of contributors.

So, The Daily Beast isn't an aggregator after all. Got it. So, what makes it worth your time?

Per Ms. Brown: "Sensibility, darling.  read more »

The Daily Beast, Tina Brown and Barry Diller's nascent Web venture, was supposed to launch yesterday, as Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici pointed out on his Mixed Media blog.

While Ms. Brown's much-anticipated entry into the news aggregation business continues to be fashionably late, the site does have a new landing page. And that landing page has a logo!  read more »

In May, The Observer's Felix Gillette looked at HBO's hiring of former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown and The New York Times' Frank Rich as "creative consultants."

At the time, he wrote:

Ms. Brown said that since January, she’s pitched two projects—an idea for a series and an idea for a movie—that the HBO executives liked and are in the process of 'taking a little further.'... 'If I collide with some interesting material, I’ll call or e-mail them. Sometimes it’s something I’m interested in doing. Sometimes it’s something I think they should know about. Richard wants to encourage people who have good relationships with the creative community to simply be thinking about HBO when they’re out and about.

According to Variety, Ms. Brown is honing in on some of that "interesting material," namely, a series based on Tom Wolfe's four year old novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons.  read more »

DENVER--Last night, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper and his wife, New Yorker writer Helen Thorpe, hosted a party in honor of Slate’s just-released ObamaMania book, but there was another more infamous member of the New Yorker family in the room. Tina Brown was wearing an electric blue suit that certainly stood out against the wood molding and green wallpaper of downtown Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore.

She stayed close to the exit, sipping white wine and chatting with her soon-to-be sister in news aggregation, Arianna Huffington. We asked Ms. Brown about the website she has been building with InterActiveCorp’s Barry Diller, but she was, as usual, reluctant to give details.  read more »

Now that HBO has hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich for consulting gigs, Felix Gillette wonders, "So what’s next?" He also notes, "the truly free-range journalist-consultant—one with a broad editorial mandate to roam here and there gnawing lustfully on some projects while trampling others willy-nilly—remains a rare and exotic beast."

Speaking of television, Doree Shafrir meets Bravo's Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, "a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage."

John Koblin looks at this past week's New York Times Magazine and writes, "Sex sells, of course—but this was not Maxim. And women writers in Manhattan could be forgiven for a slightly sickly feeling as they regarded the images. This again?" Plus: Slicing the SATC Pie.  read more »

Over the past few weeks, HBO has announced a series of moves to stem the tide of speculation that the network is faltering. After canceling 12 Miles of Bad Road, a series starring Lily Tomlin, HBO announced deals with Oscar winners Alexander Payne (of Sideways and Election fame) to develop a dark comedy called Hung, about a man who divines power from his generous equipment; and Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, who is working on not one but two shows for the network.  read more »

It seems like just yesterday—well, late October, anyway—Brijit.com, the website that read and summarized magazines, was launched. At the time, The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens profiled Brijit's founder, Jeremy Brosowsky, and wrote, "[T]he Internet is littered with good ideas that turn out to be bad businesses, and online publishing can be especially tricky: Do you go mass-market or niche? Subscription-based, or free and ad-supported? Original content or aggregation of other content?"

Yesterday, the site ceased publishing new content. In a farewell post on his own site, Brosowsky wrote, "Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we’ve run out of money, and can no longer afford to pursue our vision of adapting great long-form content for a short-form world, at least not as a stand-alone company. As recently as yesterday morning, we thought we had the funding in place to continue our work together. But as it turns out, we don’t."  read more »

At around 7:45 p.m. on Monday, April 28, writer Carl Bernstein was mingling at the cocktail hour before the PEN Literary Awards at the Museum of Natural History, Coca Cola in hand, looking very healthy. “I ride a bike and listen to a lot of music,” he said. “I mostly listen to classical but also rock.  read more »

Over at Radar, Neel Shah is reporting that Tina Brown is partnering with Barry Diller to develop what Ms. Brown called "a new take on an aggregator website."

Edward Felsenthal, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, will be the editor. There aren't many other details—Brown didn't give a launch date, or really any specifics—but apparently there will be no "ideological stance."  read more »

Did George Clooney pop the question? [Marie Claire UK]

All this while he avows that he is "gay, gay" (and not "gay, gay, gay"): "That third 'gay' was pushing it."[People]

Matt Damon's rep confirms he and his wife Luciana are expecting. [People]  read more »

Tina Brown, who edited The New Yorker during all but two of Bill Clinton's years in the White House, will write a book about the former President and his wife for Doubleday, it was announced today.

The book will be called The Clinton Chronicles--just like Ms.Brown's last one, which came out this summer, was called The Diana Chronicles. Maybe she is starting a franchise?

Phyllis Grann is the acquiring editor, just like she was on Diana, for which she paid a reported $2 million dollars. The book--which, according to the press release from Doubleday, will explore "not just the enthralling story of the Clintons themselves but the social, political and media context of the times"-- is scheduled for publication in 2010.

Tina Brown, having run magazines and briefly written a newspaper column, has a new venture. According to the Post's Liz Smith, Ms. Brown, the former editor of both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, has signed a deal to bring projects and story ideas to HBO.

Post-Sopranos, the cable network may need all the help it can get generating buzz and new ideas. And few are better at that than Ms. Brown.

This isn't Ms. Brown's first foray into television, of course. From 2004 to 2005, she hosted a weekly interview show on CNBC, which drew high-profile guests but struggled in the ratings.

Speaking of New Yorker editors, it sounds like Tina Brown has some suggestions for her sucessor at the magazine. She recently told an Indian paper: "I would probably redesign it again. I might make a shorter front of the book section."

We're sure David Remnick appreciates the advice.

And on that note: Happy Thanksgiving!  read more »

After spending the better part of last year penning The Diana Chronicles in relative isolation at her beach house, erstwhile New Yorker editor Tina Brown is, at least for the time being, happy to soak up the odd wingding.  read more »

Everyone who’s tripped over, say, any section of The New York Times lately knows that Tina Brown has written a new biography of the late Princess Diana. She celebrated it at the Sony Club, the penthouse of 550 Madison Avenue, on Monday, June 11.  read more »

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Tina Brown’s new biography of her apparent longtime girl crush, the doomed Princess of Wales, is that one doesn’t feel totally embarrassed reading it.  read more »

Last night, Al Gore mingled with muckety-mucks at Harry and Tina Brown's.

Tonight, he'll be at Town Hall with at least one of the aforementioned muckety-mucks. (That would be Laurie David, the wife of Larry David, who appears in this announcement from the Town Hall website with the alternate spelling.)

Date: (Thur) May 25 at 8 pm Event: AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: A WIRED TOWN HALL DISCUSSION ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS Description: Al Gore in conversation with James Hansen, Laurie Davide, Lawrence Bender, moderated by WIRED contributing editor John Hockenberry. Ticket Price: $20 orchestra & $15 balcony Where to get Tickets: On sale now at The Town Hall Box Office and Ticketmaster

Producer: Wired Magazine

At what point does the movie promotion end and the run for president begin?

When I met him at the Times Square offices of The New Yorker, Roger Angell—who’s just pu  read more »

My old colleague Greg Sargent says that Tina Brown and Harold Evans will be (re)introducing Al Gore to a bunch of fancy-pants media types at a private dinner party at their place next Wednesday.

The idea of the dinner, Greg quotes one source as saying, is to showcase Gore to these opinion makers in a "different light" from the "dutiful, cautious veep" they saw in 2000.

Reviewers have been noticing a certain resonance about the fiery-tressed femme fatale portrayed on the cover of Maureen Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary?.

Is the "bombshell in a clinging red dress" or the "flame-haired bombshell in a clingy crimson dress and matching pumps," described by Katherine Harrison and Joy Press in The New York Times Book Review and The Village Voice, respectively, meant as a stand-in for the author herself? Dowd's vampy hose-and-heels full-page portrait accompanying a recent New York Times Magazine excerpt from the book—and her portrayal in the noirishly headlined New York magazine cover story The Redhead and the Gray Lady—reinforced the notion that the two redheads are one and the same.

But there's another reason Dowd's cover girl looks so familiar: She's virtually identical to the woman gracing the cover of the June 26, 1995 'Fiction Issue' of The New Yorker

The two paintings, both by 40-year-old East Bay, CA illustrator Owen Smith, are near mirror images. The earlier woman has slightly lighter hair and a slightly less clingy dress, but both women are reading a book with one hand and straphanging with the other—while a fellow passenger in the foreground looks up and studies her curves with what undergrads might call "the male gaze."

"She wanted me to do this woman I'd done, this archetypal 40s dame," Smith said by phone. The woman was never meant to specifically reference Dowd, he said, but the two share some qualities: "She's a redhead and she's attractive... She's a strong woman, but she's comforta