Tina Brown
Encyclopedia
Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE
(born Christina Hambley Brown; November 21, 1953), is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles
, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales
. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair
. Having been editor-in-chief of Tatler
magazine at only 25 years of age, she rose to prominence in the American media industry as the editor of Vanity Fair from 1984 to 1992 and of The New Yorker
from 1992 to 1998. In 2000 she was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire
) for her services to overseas journalism, and in 2007 was inducted into the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame. As an editor, she has also been honored with four George Polk Awards
, five Overseas Press Club
awards, and ten National Magazine Award
s. In October 2008 she partnered Barry Diller
, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp
to found and edit The Daily Beast
. Two years later, in November 2010, The Daily Beast announced that it will merge with the American weekly news magazine Newsweek
in a joint venture to form The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Brown will serve as Editor-in-Chief of both publications.
, and she and her elder brother, Christopher Hambley Brown (who became a movie producer) grew up in Little Marlow
, in Buckinghamshire
, a Thames village in the countryside west of London
. Her father, George Hambley Brown, was a prominent figure in the British film
industry. He produced the first Agatha Christie
films, starring Margaret Rutherford
as Miss Marple
. His other films included The Chiltern Hundreds (1949); Hotel Sahara (1951), starring Yvonne De Carlo
; Guns at Batasi (1964), starring Richard Attenborough
and Mia Farrow
. In 1939, he had an early marriage to the actress Maureen O'Hara
; according to O'Hara, it was never consummated owing to her parents' intervention, and it was annulled. George later met and married Brown's mother, (1948), Bettina Iris Mary Kohr, who was an assistant to Laurence Olivier
. In her later years, Bettina wrote for an English-language magazine for expatriates in Spain
where she and her husband lived in retirement until moving to New York in the early eighties to be with their daughter and grandchildren.
university at the age of 17. She studied at St. Anne's College, and graduated with a BA in English Literature
. As an undergraduate, she wrote for Isis, the university's literary magazine, to which she contributed interviews with the columnist Auberon Waugh
and the actor Dudley Moore
. Brown's sharp, witty prose garnered her publication in The New Statesman
while she was still an undergraduate at Oxford. Her friendship with Waugh served as a boost to her writing career, as he used his influence to get attention drawn to her ability. Later, she went on to date the writer Martin Amis
. While still at Oxford, she won the Sunday Times National Student Drama Award for her one-act play Under the Bamboo Tree. A subsequent play, Happy Yellow, in 1977 was mounted at the London fringe Bush Theatre and later performed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
.
introduced Brown's writings to Harold Evans
, editor of The Sunday Times
, and in 1974 she was given freelance assignments in the UK by Ian Jack
, the paper's features editor, and in the US by its color magazine edited by Godfrey Smith. When a relationship developed between Brown and Evans, she resigned to write for the rival The Sunday Telegraph. Evans divorced his wife in 1978 and on August 20, 1981 Evans and Brown were married at Grey Gardens
, the East Hampton
, New York, home of then The Washington Post
executive editor Ben Bradlee
and Sally Quinn
. Brown lives in New York City with Sir Harold Evans and their two children, a son, George born in 1986 and a daughter, Isabel, born in 1990.
. These articles and her freelance contributions to The Sunday Times
and The Sunday Telegraph earned her the Catherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist under 25. Some of the writings from this era formed part of her first collection Loose Talk, published by Michael Joseph.
In 1979 at the age of 25 Brown was invited to edit the tiny, almost extinct society magazine Tatler
by its new owner, the Australian real estate millionaire Gary Bogard and transformed it into a modern glossy magazine with covers by celebrated photographers like Norman Parkinson
, Helmut Newton
, and David Bailey, and fashion by Michael Roberts. Tatler
featured writers from Brown's eclectic circle including Julian Barnes, Dennis Potter, Auberon Waugh
, Georgina Howell and Nicholas Coleridge
(who today is the managing director of Conde Nast UK). Brown herself wrote in every issue, contributing irreverent surveys of the upper classes. She travelled through Scotland to portray the owners' stately homes. She also wrote short satirical profiles of eligible London bachelors under the pen-name Rosie Boot. Tatler
led the coverage of the rise of Lady Di
and became the go-to magazine for information about Diana's world. She joined NBC's Tom Brokaw
in running commentary for The Today Show
on the royal wedding. Tatler
increased its sale from 10,000 to 40,000 and was named magazine of the year in the industry awards of 1978. In 1982 when S. I. ("Si") Newhouse Jr., owner of Condé Nast Publications
, bought Tatler
Brown resigned to become a full-time writer again. The break didn't last long and Tina was lured back to Conde Nast.
, a title that he had resurrected earlier that year. (Vanity Fair had previously ceased publication in 1936) Edited first by Richard Locke and then by Leo Lerman
, it was dying with an unviable circulation of 200,000 and 12 pages of advertising. She stayed on as a contributing editor for a brief time, and then was named editor-in-chief on January 1, 1984. She recalls that upon taking over the magazine she found it to be "pretentious, humourless. It wasn't too clever, it was just dull."
The first contract writer she hired was not a writer but a movie producer whom she met at a dinner party hosted by the writer Marie Brenner
. The producer told her he was going to California for the trial of the strangler of his daughter. As solace, Brown suggested for him to keep a diary and his report (headlined Justice) proved the launch of the long magazine career of Dominick Dunne
Early stories such as Justice and livelier covers brightened the prospects of the magazine. In addition, Brown signed up among others Marie Brenner
, Gail Sheehy
, Jesse Kornbluth, T.D. Allman, Lynn Herschberg, James Kaplan, Peter J. Boyer, John Richardson, James Atlas, Alex Shoumatoff
and Ben Brantley. The magazine became a mix of celebrity and serious foreign and domestic reporting. Brown persuaded the novelist William Styron
to write about his depression under the title Darkness Visible
, which subsequently became a best-selling nonfiction book. At the same time Brown formed fruitful relationships with photographers Annie Leibovitz
, Harry Benson
, Herb Ritts
, and Helmut Newton
. Annie Liebovitz's portrayal of Jerry Hall
, Diane Keaton
, Whoopi Goldberg
and others came to define Vanity Fair. Its most famous cover was August 1991's of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore
.
Three stories put Vanity Fair on the map: Harry Benson
's cover shoot of Ronald
and Nancy Reagan
dancing in the White House; Helmut Newton
's notorious portrait of accused murderer Claus von Bulow
in his leathers with his mistress Andrea Reynolds with reporting by Dominick Dunne
, and Brown's own cover story on Princess Diana in October 1985 entitled The Mouse that Roared. It broke the news of the fracture in the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. These three stories from June to October 1985 saved the magazine after a year when rumors were rife that it was to be folded into The New Yorker just acquired by S.I. Newhouse.
Thereafter Vanity Fair became a tremendous editorial and commercial success. Sales rose from 200,000 to 1.2 million. In 1988 she was named Magazine Editor of the Year by Advertising Age
magazine. Advertising topped 1,440 pages in 1991 and with circulation revenues, especially from profitable single copy sales at $20 million, selling some 55 percent of copies on the newsstand, well above the industry average sell through of 42 percent. Despite this success, occasional references later appeared to Vanity Fair losing money. Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer
who suggested as much in his book Power: Why Some People Have It - And Others Don’t was quickly rebutted by Bernard Leser, president of Conde Nast USA during Brown’s tenure. In a letter to the editor of the Evening Standard
, Leser stated Pfeffer’s claim was “absolutely false” and affirmed that they had indeed earned “a very healthy profit.” Leo Scullin, an independent magazine consultant, called it a "successful launch of a franchise." Under Brown's editorship Vanity Fair won four National Magazine Awards, including a 1989 award for General Excellence.
One of her editorial decisions was in October 1990, two months after the first Gulf War had started, when she removed a picture of Marla Maples
(a blonde) from the cover and replaced it with a photograph of Cher
. The reason for her last minute decision, she told the Washington Post, was that "In light of the gulf crisis, we thought a brunette was more appropriate."
, William Shawn
and Robert Gottlieb
. She has related in speeches that before taking over, she immersed herself in vintage New Yorkers, reading the issues produced by founding editor Harold Ross
. "There was an irreverence, a lightness of touch as well as a literary voice that had been obscured in later years when the magazine became more celebrated and stuffy." She added: "Rekindling that DNA became my passion."
Anxieties that Brown might change the identity of The New Yorker as a cultural institution prompted a number of resignations. Of them George Trow, who had been with the magazine for almost three decades, accused Brown of "kissing the ass of celebrity" in his resignation letter. (To which Brown reportedly replied "I am distraught at your defection but since you never actually write anything I should say I am notionally distraught.") The departing Jamaica Kincaid
described Brown as "a bully" and "Stalin in high heels."
But Brown had the support of some New Yorker stalwarts including John Updike
, Roger Angell
, Brendan Gill
, Lillian Ross
, Calvin Tomkins
, Janet Malcolm
, Harold Brodkey
and Philip Hamburger
and newer staffers like Adam Gopnik
and Nancy Franklin. During her editorship she let 79 go and engaged 50 new writers and editors including most of whom remain to this day: David Remnick
(whom she nominated as her successor), Malcolm Gladwell
, Anthony Lane, Jane Mayer, Jeffrey Toobin
, Hendrik Hertzberg
, Simon Schama
, Lawrence Wright, Connie Bruck, John Lahr
and editors Pamela McCarthy and Dorothy Wickenden. Brown introduced the concept of special double issues such as New Yorkers first annual fiction issue and the Holiday Season cartoon issue. She also cooperated with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates to devote a whole issue to Black in America.
Brown broke the magazine's long standing taboo against treating photography seriously when in 1992 she invited Richard Avedon
to be its first staff photographer. She also approved of controversial covers from a new crop of artists, including Edward Sorel
's October 1992 cover that had people buzzing about the meaning of a punk rock passenger sprawled in the backseat of an elegant horse-drawn carriage: was it Brown's self mocking riposte to fears she would downgrade the magazine? A year later a national controversy was provoked by her publication of Art Spiegelman
's Valentine's Day cover of a Jewish man and a black woman in an embracing kiss, a comment on the mounting racial tensions between blacks and the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York.
During Brown's tenure, the magazine was honored with 4 George Polk Awards, 5 Overseas Press Club Awards, and 10 National Magazine Awards, including a 1995 award for General Excellence, the first in the magazine's history. Newsstand sales rose 145 percent The New Yorkers circulation increased to 807,935 for the second half of 1997 up from 658,916 during the corresponding period in 1992. Critics maintained it was hemorrhaging money. Newhouse remained supportive. At the start he said, viewing the magazine under Brown as a start-up (which routinely lose money), "It was practically a new magazine. She added topicality, photography, color. She did what we would have done if we invented the New Yorker from scratch. To do all that was costly. We knew it would be." Under Brown its economic fortunes improved every year. In 1995 losses were about $17 million, in 1996 $14 million, by 1997 they'd been cut back to $11 million.
In 1998, Brown resigned from the New Yorker following an invitation from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films
(then owned by the Disney Company) to be the chairman in a new multi-media company they intended to start with a new magazine, a book company and a television show. The Hearst company came in as partners with Miramax.
The departing verdicts after Brown's New Yorker tenure included:
magazine, a monthly glossy, and appointed Jonathan Burnham and Susan Mercandetti to manage Talk Books. The magazine was due to be launched during a party at the Brooklyn Navy yard in New York City but was banned by the mayor Rudy Giuliani
, who did not feel it was an appropriate use of the site. The star-studded event mixing political leaders, writers and Hollywood, was then moved to Liberty Island
, where on August 2, 1999 more than 800 guests - including Madonna
, Salman Rushdie, Demi Moore
and George Plimpton
- arrived by barge for a picnic dinner at the feet of the Statue of Liberty
under thousands of Japanese lanterns and a Grucci fireworks display. An interview with Hillary Clinton in its very first issue caused an immediate political sensation when she claimed that the abuse her husband suffered as a child led to his adult philandering. Despite having achieved a circulation of 670,000 Talk magazine's publication was abruptly halted in January 2002 in the wake of the advertising recession following the September 11, 2001 attacks
and the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center. It was Brown's first very public failure but she had no regrets about embarking on the project. "My reputation rests on four magazines - three great successes, one that was a great experiment. I don't feel in any way let down. No big career doesn't have one flame out in it and there's nobody more boring than the undefeated."
Talk Miramax Books flourished as a boutique publishing house until it was detached from Miramax in 2005 and made part of Hyperion at Disney. Out of 42 books published during Brown's time, 11 have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List including Leadership by Rudy Giuliani
, Leap of Faith by Queen Noor of Jordan and Madam Secretary by Madeline Albright.
. The network followed up by signing her to host a weekly talk show of politics and culture titled Topic [A] With Tina Brown, which debuted on May 4, 2003. The program welcomed guests ranging from political figures, such as the then Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair
, and Senator John McCain
, to celebrities, such as George Clooney
and Annette Bening
. Topic A struggled to find an audience on Sunday nights airing after a day of infomercials. It averaged 75,000 viewers in 2005, about the same as The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (79,000) and John McEnroe's McEnroe (75,000.) On being offered a lucrative deal with tight deadlines to write a book about Princess Diana
, Brown resigned, airing her last Topic A interviews on May 29, 2005.
, was published just before the 10th anniversary of her death in June 2007. The Diana Chronicles went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for hardback nonfiction, with two weeks in the number one position. It was received well:
John Lanchester in The New Yorker wrote
The New York Times:
The Wall Street Journal:
to launch The Daily Beast, an online news magazine that mixes original journalism with news aggregation. The website's name comes from the fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh
's 1938 novel Scoop.
The Daily Beast had an immediate impact with an early sensation when Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr.
, chose The Daily Beast rather than the magazine his father founded (National Review
), to announce he could not support the republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election: "Sorry, Dad, I'm voting for Obama." Early recognition of The Daily Beast came in a series of awards:
Online Journalism Award 2009 for Online Commentary/Blogging, Christopher Buckley;
OMMA Awards 2009 Winner - Politics; Winner - News;
MinOnline Top 21 Social Media Superstars 2009 for Tina Brown;
MinOnline 2010 Best of the Web Awards: New Site (co-winner);
Webby Award nominations for Best Practices and Best News 2009
In August 2010, Time Magazine's review of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 named The Daily Beast among the top five news and information sites. (The Onion
at 16, The Guardian
at 17, The Daily Beast at 18, National Geographic at 19, and WikiLeaks
at 20)
The Daily Beasts writers include Christopher Buckley, Peter Beinart
, Les Gelb, Mark McKinnon
, Meghan McCain
, John Avlon
, Lucinda Franks
, Bruce Riedel
, Lloyd Grove
, Tunku Varadarajan
and Reza Aslan
.
In a joint venture with Perseus Book Group, The Daily Beast formed a new imprint, Beast Books, that focuses on publishing timely titles of no more than 50,000 words by Daily Beast writers - first as e-book
s, and then as paperbacks in as little as four months. The first Beast Book was entitled Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America by John P. Avlon
.
Partnering with Diane von Furstenberg
, Vital Voices
and the UN Foundation in 2010, The Daily Beast brought some of the world's most inspiring female leaders together at the Hudson Theatre in New York City for the first annual Women in the World Summit. The mission of the three-day summit was to focus on the global challenges facing women, from equal rights and education, to human slavery, literacy and the power of the media and technology to affect change in women's lives. Attendees included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep
, Leymah Gbowee
, Sunitha Krishnan
, Madeleine Albright
, Edna Adan Ismail
, Queen Rania of Jordan, Cherie Blair
and Valerie Jarrett
.
On November 12, 2010 The Daily Beast
and Newsweek
announced that they would merge their operations in a joint venture to be owned equally by Sidney Harman
and IAC/InterActiveCorp
. The new entity is to be called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company with Tina Brown as Editor-in-Chief and Stephen Colvin as CEO.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born Christina Hambley Brown; November 21, 1953), is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles
The Diana Chronicles
The Diana Chronicles is a 2007 book by Tina Brown on the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was released June 12, 2007. The work's timing coincided with the increased attention Diana received leading up to the tenth anniversary of her death...
, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
. Having been editor-in-chief of Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
magazine at only 25 years of age, she rose to prominence in the American media industry as the editor of Vanity Fair from 1984 to 1992 and of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
from 1992 to 1998. In 2000 she was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
) for her services to overseas journalism, and in 2007 was inducted into the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame. As an editor, she has also been honored with four George Polk Awards
George Polk Awards
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States.-History:...
, five Overseas Press Club
Overseas Press Club
The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...
awards, and ten National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
s. In October 2008 she partnered Barry Diller
Barry Diller
Barry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp
IAC/InterActiveCorp
InterActiveCorp is an American internet company with over 50 brands across 40 countries headquartered in New York City...
to found and edit The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine. The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC...
. Two years later, in November 2010, The Daily Beast announced that it will merge with the American weekly news magazine Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in a joint venture to form The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Brown will serve as Editor-in-Chief of both publications.
Early life
Tina Brown was born in MaidenheadMaidenhead
Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...
, and she and her elder brother, Christopher Hambley Brown (who became a movie producer) grew up in Little Marlow
Little Marlow
Little Marlow is a village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England.It is on the north bank of the River Thames, about a mile east of Marlow. The toponym "Marlow" is derived from the Old English for "land remaining after the draining of a pool"...
, in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, a Thames village in the countryside west of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Her father, George Hambley Brown, was a prominent figure in the British film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
industry. He produced the first Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
films, starring Margaret Rutherford
Margaret Rutherford
Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford DBE was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest...
as Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...
. His other films included The Chiltern Hundreds (1949); Hotel Sahara (1951), starring Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced ; Anna in Criss Cross ; Sephora the...
; Guns at Batasi (1964), starring Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
and Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow is an American actress, singer, humanitarian, and fashion model.Farrow first gained wide acclaim for her role as Allison Mackenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place, and for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra...
. In 1939, he had an early marriage to the actress Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...
; according to O'Hara, it was never consummated owing to her parents' intervention, and it was annulled. George later met and married Brown's mother, (1948), Bettina Iris Mary Kohr, who was an assistant to Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
. In her later years, Bettina wrote for an English-language magazine for expatriates in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
where she and her husband lived in retirement until moving to New York in the early eighties to be with their daughter and grandchildren.
School
In Brown's own words she was considered "an extremely subversive influence" as a child, resulting in her expulsion from three boarding schools. Offences included organising a demonstration to protest against the school's policy of allowing a change of underwear only three times a week, referring to her headmistress' bosoms as "unidentified flying objects" in a journal entry, and writing a play about her school being blown up and a public bathroom being erected in its place.University
Brown entered OxfordUniversity of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
university at the age of 17. She studied at St. Anne's College, and graduated with a BA in English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
. As an undergraduate, she wrote for Isis, the university's literary magazine, to which she contributed interviews with the columnist Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
and the actor Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...
. Brown's sharp, witty prose garnered her publication in The New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
while she was still an undergraduate at Oxford. Her friendship with Waugh served as a boost to her writing career, as he used his influence to get attention drawn to her ability. Later, she went on to date the writer Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
. While still at Oxford, she won the Sunday Times National Student Drama Award for her one-act play Under the Bamboo Tree. A subsequent play, Happy Yellow, in 1977 was mounted at the London fringe Bush Theatre and later performed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
.
Relationship
In 1973, the literary agent Pat KavanaghPat Kavanagh (agent)
Patricia Olive Kavanagh was a British literary agent.Kavanagh was born in 1940 in Durban, South Africa, where her father was a journalist. Her half-sister, Julie Kavanagh, is a ballet critic. Her half-brother, Michael O'Brien is a geologist for AngloGold Ashanti in Johannesburg...
introduced Brown's writings to Harold Evans
Harold Evans
Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism...
, editor of The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, and in 1974 she was given freelance assignments in the UK by Ian Jack
Ian Jack
Ian Jack is a Scottish journalist who was the editor of the literary magazine Granta from 1995 to 2007. Granta 98 "The Deep End" was the 48th issue which Jack edited and the last.Jack was educated at Dunfermline High School...
, the paper's features editor, and in the US by its color magazine edited by Godfrey Smith. When a relationship developed between Brown and Evans, she resigned to write for the rival The Sunday Telegraph. Evans divorced his wife in 1978 and on August 20, 1981 Evans and Brown were married at Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens is a 1975 documentary film by Albert and David Maysles, with Susan Froemke, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer. The film depicts the everyday lives of two reclusive socialites, a mother and daughter both named Edith Beale, who lived at Grey Gardens, a decrepit mansion at 3 West End Road in...
, the East Hampton
East Hampton (village), New York
The Village of East Hampton is a village in Town of East Hampton, New York. It is located in Suffolk County, on the South Fork of eastern Long Island...
, New York, home of then The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
executive editor Ben Bradlee
Benjamin C. Bradlee
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee is a vice president at-large of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1968 to 1991, he became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and...
and Sally Quinn
Sally Quinn
Sally Sterling Quinn is an American author and journalist, who writes about religion for a blog at The Washington Post.-Personal:...
. Brown lives in New York City with Sir Harold Evans and their two children, a son, George born in 1986 and a daughter, Isabel, born in 1990.
Early work
After graduating, while doing freelance reporting, Brown was invited to write a weekly column by the literary humour magazine, PunchPunch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
. These articles and her freelance contributions to The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
and The Sunday Telegraph earned her the Catherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist under 25. Some of the writings from this era formed part of her first collection Loose Talk, published by Michael Joseph.
In 1979 at the age of 25 Brown was invited to edit the tiny, almost extinct society magazine Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
by its new owner, the Australian real estate millionaire Gary Bogard and transformed it into a modern glossy magazine with covers by celebrated photographers like Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson, CBE was a celebrated English portrait and fashion photographer.-Biography:Parkinson was born in London, and educated at Westminster School. He began his career in 1931 as an apprentice to the court photographers Speaight and Sons Ltd...
, Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...
, and David Bailey, and fashion by Michael Roberts. Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
featured writers from Brown's eclectic circle including Julian Barnes, Dennis Potter, Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
, Georgina Howell and Nicholas Coleridge
Nicholas Coleridge
Nicholas David Coleridge CBE is the Managing Director of Condé Nast in Britain, the magazine publishing house that includes Vogue, Glamour, GQ, The World of Interiors, House & Garden, Conde Nast Traveller, Tatler, Easy Living, the Conde Nast Johansen hotel guides, Brides, Wired, Love and Vanity...
(who today is the managing director of Conde Nast UK). Brown herself wrote in every issue, contributing irreverent surveys of the upper classes. She travelled through Scotland to portray the owners' stately homes. She also wrote short satirical profiles of eligible London bachelors under the pen-name Rosie Boot. Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
led the coverage of the rise of Lady Di
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
and became the go-to magazine for information about Diana's world. She joined NBC's Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors...
in running commentary for The Today Show
The Today Show
Today is an iconic American morning news and talk show airing every morning on NBC. Debuting on January 14, 1952, it was the first of its genre on American television and in the world. The show is also the fourth-longest running American television series...
on the royal wedding. Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
increased its sale from 10,000 to 40,000 and was named magazine of the year in the industry awards of 1978. In 1982 when S. I. ("Si") Newhouse Jr., owner of Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
, bought Tatler
Tatler
Tatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
Brown resigned to become a full-time writer again. The break didn't last long and Tina was lured back to Conde Nast.
Vanity Fair
In 1983 Brown was brought to New York by Newhouse to advise on Vanity FairVanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, a title that he had resurrected earlier that year. (Vanity Fair had previously ceased publication in 1936) Edited first by Richard Locke and then by Leo Lerman
Leo Lerman
Leo Lerman was an American writer and editor who worked for Condé Nast Publications for more than 50 years. Lerman also wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, Harper's Bazaar, Dance Magazine, and Playbill.Lerman grew up in a Jewish immigrant family in East Harlem and Queens, New York...
, it was dying with an unviable circulation of 200,000 and 12 pages of advertising. She stayed on as a contributing editor for a brief time, and then was named editor-in-chief on January 1, 1984. She recalls that upon taking over the magazine she found it to be "pretentious, humourless. It wasn't too clever, it was just dull."
The first contract writer she hired was not a writer but a movie producer whom she met at a dinner party hosted by the writer Marie Brenner
Marie Brenner
Marie Brenner is an American author, investigative journalist and writer-at-large for Vanity Fair. She has also written for New York, The New Yorker and the Boston Herald and has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism...
. The producer told her he was going to California for the trial of the strangler of his daughter. As solace, Brown suggested for him to keep a diary and his report (headlined Justice) proved the launch of the long magazine career of Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne
Dominick John Dunne was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system...
Early stories such as Justice and livelier covers brightened the prospects of the magazine. In addition, Brown signed up among others Marie Brenner
Marie Brenner
Marie Brenner is an American author, investigative journalist and writer-at-large for Vanity Fair. She has also written for New York, The New Yorker and the Boston Herald and has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism...
, Gail Sheehy
Gail Sheehy
Gail Sheehy is an American writer and lecturer, most notable for her books on life and the life cycle. She is also a contributor to Vanity Fair magazine....
, Jesse Kornbluth, T.D. Allman, Lynn Herschberg, James Kaplan, Peter J. Boyer, John Richardson, James Atlas, Alex Shoumatoff
Alex Shoumatoff
Alex Shoumatoff , is an American writer known for his literary journalism, nature and environmental writing, and books and magazine pieces about political and environmental situations and world affairs...
and Ben Brantley. The magazine became a mix of celebrity and serious foreign and domestic reporting. Brown persuaded the novelist William Styron
William Styron
William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
to write about his depression under the title Darkness Visible
Darkness Visible (Styron)
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness is U.S. writer William Styron's memoir about his descent into depression, and the triumph of recovery....
, which subsequently became a best-selling nonfiction book. At the same time Brown formed fruitful relationships with photographers Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...
, Harry Benson
Harry Benson
Harry James Benson, CBE, born in Glasgow, Scotland, is a photographer whose pictures have appeared in publications including Life, Vanity Fair, People and The New Yorker....
, Herb Ritts
Herb Ritts
Herbert "Herb" Ritts was an American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture.-Early life and career:...
, and Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...
. Annie Liebovitz's portrayal of Jerry Hall
Jerry Hall
Jerry Faye Hall is an American model and actress, also known for her long-term relationship with Mick Jagger, with whom she had four children.-Early life:...
, Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970...
, Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
and others came to define Vanity Fair. Its most famous cover was August 1991's of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore
Demi Moore
Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...
.
Three stories put Vanity Fair on the map: Harry Benson
Harry Benson
Harry James Benson, CBE, born in Glasgow, Scotland, is a photographer whose pictures have appeared in publications including Life, Vanity Fair, People and The New Yorker....
's cover shoot of Ronald
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and Nancy Reagan
Nancy Reagan
Nancy Davis Reagan is the widow of former United States President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989....
dancing in the White House; Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...
's notorious portrait of accused murderer Claus von Bulow
Claus von Bülow
Claus von Bülow is a British socialite of German and Danish ancestry. He was accused of the attempted murder of his wife Sunny von Bülow by administering an insulin overdose in 1980 but his conviction in the first trial was reversed and he was found not guilty in both his retrials.-Biography:Born...
in his leathers with his mistress Andrea Reynolds with reporting by Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne
Dominick John Dunne was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system...
, and Brown's own cover story on Princess Diana in October 1985 entitled The Mouse that Roared. It broke the news of the fracture in the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. These three stories from June to October 1985 saved the magazine after a year when rumors were rife that it was to be folded into The New Yorker just acquired by S.I. Newhouse.
Thereafter Vanity Fair became a tremendous editorial and commercial success. Sales rose from 200,000 to 1.2 million. In 1988 she was named Magazine Editor of the Year by Advertising Age
Advertising Age
Advertising Age is a magazine, delivering news, analysis and data on marketing and media. The magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930...
magazine. Advertising topped 1,440 pages in 1991 and with circulation revenues, especially from profitable single copy sales at $20 million, selling some 55 percent of copies on the newsstand, well above the industry average sell through of 42 percent. Despite this success, occasional references later appeared to Vanity Fair losing money. Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer
Jeffrey Pfeffer
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Ph.D., is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and is considered one of today's most influential management thinkers...
who suggested as much in his book Power: Why Some People Have It - And Others Don’t was quickly rebutted by Bernard Leser, president of Conde Nast USA during Brown’s tenure. In a letter to the editor of the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
, Leser stated Pfeffer’s claim was “absolutely false” and affirmed that they had indeed earned “a very healthy profit.” Leo Scullin, an independent magazine consultant, called it a "successful launch of a franchise." Under Brown's editorship Vanity Fair won four National Magazine Awards, including a 1989 award for General Excellence.
One of her editorial decisions was in October 1990, two months after the first Gulf War had started, when she removed a picture of Marla Maples
Marla Maples
Marla Maples is an American actress, television personality, and socialite, best known for her marriage to businessman celebrity Donald Trump.- Personal life :...
(a blonde) from the cover and replaced it with a photograph of Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
. The reason for her last minute decision, she told the Washington Post, was that "In light of the gulf crisis, we thought a brunette was more appropriate."
The New Yorker
In 1992, Brown accepted the company's invitation to become editor of The New Yorker, the fourth in its 73 year history and the first female to hold the position having been preceded by Harold RossHarold Ross
Harold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
, William Shawn
William Shawn
William Shawn was an American magazine editor who edited The New Yorker from 1952 until 1987.-Education and Early Life:...
and Robert Gottlieb
Robert Gottlieb
Robert Adams Gottlieb , is an American writer and editor. From 1987 to 1992 he was the editor of The New Yorker.-Personal:Robert Gottlieb was born in New York City in 1931 and grew up in Manhattan...
. She has related in speeches that before taking over, she immersed herself in vintage New Yorkers, reading the issues produced by founding editor Harold Ross
Harold Ross
Harold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
. "There was an irreverence, a lightness of touch as well as a literary voice that had been obscured in later years when the magazine became more celebrated and stuffy." She added: "Rekindling that DNA became my passion."
Anxieties that Brown might change the identity of The New Yorker as a cultural institution prompted a number of resignations. Of them George Trow, who had been with the magazine for almost three decades, accused Brown of "kissing the ass of celebrity" in his resignation letter. (To which Brown reportedly replied "I am distraught at your defection but since you never actually write anything I should say I am notionally distraught.") The departing Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean novelist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in the city of St. John's on the island of Antigua in the nation of Antigua and Barbuda...
described Brown as "a bully" and "Stalin in high heels."
But Brown had the support of some New Yorker stalwarts including John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, Roger Angell
Roger Angell
Roger Angell is an American essayist. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years...
, Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
, Lillian Ross
Lillian Ross (journalist)
Lillian Ross is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1945. She was born in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Louis and Edna Ross. With the exception of her memoir Here but Not Here, about her relationship with William Shawn, she has been...
, Calvin Tomkins
Calvin Tomkins
Calvin Tomkins is an author and art critic for The New Yorker magazine.Tomkins was born in 1925, in Orange, New Jersey. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1948 he became a journalist...
, Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession , In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer ....
, Harold Brodkey
Harold Brodkey
Harold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub was an American writer, and novelist.-Life:Brodkey was raised in University City, Missouri outside St. Louis...
and Philip Hamburger
Philip Hamburger
Philip Hamburger is an American legal scholar.Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at the Columbia University School of Law. He is a legal historian and a scholar of constitutional law. Before moving to Columbia, Hamburger was John P...
and newer staffers like Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik, is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife...
and Nancy Franklin. During her editorship she let 79 go and engaged 50 new writers and editors including most of whom remain to this day: David Remnick
David Remnick
David Remnick is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000...
(whom she nominated as her successor), Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
, Anthony Lane, Jane Mayer, Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, and legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker.-Early life and education:...
, Hendrik Hertzberg
Hendrik Hertzberg
Hendrik Hertzberg is an American journalist, best known as the principal political commentator for The New Yorker magazine. He has also been a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and editor of The New Republic, and is the author of ¡Obámanos! The Rise of a New Political Era and Politics:...
, Simon Schama
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...
, Lawrence Wright, Connie Bruck, John Lahr
John Lahr
John Lahr is an American theater critic, and the son of actor Bert Lahr. Since 1992, he has been the senior drama critic at The New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
and editors Pamela McCarthy and Dorothy Wickenden. Brown introduced the concept of special double issues such as New Yorkers first annual fiction issue and the Holiday Season cartoon issue. She also cooperated with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates to devote a whole issue to Black in America.
Brown broke the magazine's long standing taboo against treating photography seriously when in 1992 she invited Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
to be its first staff photographer. She also approved of controversial covers from a new crop of artists, including Edward Sorel
Edward Sorel
Edward Sorel is an illustrator, caricaturist, cartoonist, and graphic designer.Sorel is noted for his wavy pen-and-ink style, which he describes as "spontaneous direct drawing," since he does not use pencil or tracing for guidance...
's October 1992 cover that had people buzzing about the meaning of a punk rock passenger sprawled in the backseat of an elegant horse-drawn carriage: was it Brown's self mocking riposte to fears she would downgrade the magazine? A year later a national controversy was provoked by her publication of Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
's Valentine's Day cover of a Jewish man and a black woman in an embracing kiss, a comment on the mounting racial tensions between blacks and the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York.
During Brown's tenure, the magazine was honored with 4 George Polk Awards, 5 Overseas Press Club Awards, and 10 National Magazine Awards, including a 1995 award for General Excellence, the first in the magazine's history. Newsstand sales rose 145 percent The New Yorkers circulation increased to 807,935 for the second half of 1997 up from 658,916 during the corresponding period in 1992. Critics maintained it was hemorrhaging money. Newhouse remained supportive. At the start he said, viewing the magazine under Brown as a start-up (which routinely lose money), "It was practically a new magazine. She added topicality, photography, color. She did what we would have done if we invented the New Yorker from scratch. To do all that was costly. We knew it would be." Under Brown its economic fortunes improved every year. In 1995 losses were about $17 million, in 1996 $14 million, by 1997 they'd been cut back to $11 million.
In 1998, Brown resigned from the New Yorker following an invitation from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films
Miramax Films
Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...
(then owned by the Disney Company) to be the chairman in a new multi-media company they intended to start with a new magazine, a book company and a television show. The Hearst company came in as partners with Miramax.
The departing verdicts after Brown's New Yorker tenure included:
Talk Magazine
Tina Brown next created TalkTalk (magazine)
Talk was an American magazine published from 1999 to 2001.When it was launched as a joint venture between Miramax and Hearst Publishing, under the editorship of Tina Brown , it generated notoriety for its celebrity profiles and interviews...
magazine, a monthly glossy, and appointed Jonathan Burnham and Susan Mercandetti to manage Talk Books. The magazine was due to be launched during a party at the Brooklyn Navy yard in New York City but was banned by the mayor Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
, who did not feel it was an appropriate use of the site. The star-studded event mixing political leaders, writers and Hollywood, was then moved to Liberty Island
Liberty Island
Liberty Island is a small uninhabited island in New York Harbor in the United States, best known as the location of the Statue of Liberty. Though so called since the turn of the century, the name did not become official until 1956. In 1937, by proclamation 2250, President Franklin D...
, where on August 2, 1999 more than 800 guests - including Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
, Salman Rushdie, Demi Moore
Demi Moore
Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...
and George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
- arrived by barge for a picnic dinner at the feet of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
under thousands of Japanese lanterns and a Grucci fireworks display. An interview with Hillary Clinton in its very first issue caused an immediate political sensation when she claimed that the abuse her husband suffered as a child led to his adult philandering. Despite having achieved a circulation of 670,000 Talk magazine's publication was abruptly halted in January 2002 in the wake of the advertising recession following the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
and the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center. It was Brown's first very public failure but she had no regrets about embarking on the project. "My reputation rests on four magazines - three great successes, one that was a great experiment. I don't feel in any way let down. No big career doesn't have one flame out in it and there's nobody more boring than the undefeated."
Talk Miramax Books flourished as a boutique publishing house until it was detached from Miramax in 2005 and made part of Hyperion at Disney. Out of 42 books published during Brown's time, 11 have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List including Leadership by Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
, Leap of Faith by Queen Noor of Jordan and Madam Secretary by Madeline Albright.
Topic A
Brown went on to host a series of specials for CNBCCNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
. The network followed up by signing her to host a weekly talk show of politics and culture titled Topic [A] With Tina Brown, which debuted on May 4, 2003. The program welcomed guests ranging from political figures, such as the then Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, and Senator John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, to celebrities, such as George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
and Annette Bening
Annette Bening
Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. Bening is a four-time Oscar nominee for her roles in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right, winning Golden Globe Awards for the latter two films...
. Topic A struggled to find an audience on Sunday nights airing after a day of infomercials. It averaged 75,000 viewers in 2005, about the same as The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (79,000) and John McEnroe's McEnroe (75,000.) On being offered a lucrative deal with tight deadlines to write a book about Princess Diana
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
, Brown resigned, airing her last Topic A interviews on May 29, 2005.
The Diana Chronicles
Brown's biography of Princess DianaDiana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
, was published just before the 10th anniversary of her death in June 2007. The Diana Chronicles went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for hardback nonfiction, with two weeks in the number one position. It was received well:
John Lanchester in The New Yorker wrote
The New York Times:
The Wall Street Journal:
The Daily Beast
On October 6, 2008 Brown had teamed up with Barry DillerBarry Diller
Barry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
to launch The Daily Beast, an online news magazine that mixes original journalism with news aggregation. The website's name comes from the fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
's 1938 novel Scoop.
The Daily Beast had an immediate impact with an early sensation when Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, chose The Daily Beast rather than the magazine his father founded (National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
), to announce he could not support the republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election: "Sorry, Dad, I'm voting for Obama." Early recognition of The Daily Beast came in a series of awards:
Online Journalism Award 2009 for Online Commentary/Blogging, Christopher Buckley;
OMMA Awards 2009 Winner - Politics; Winner - News;
MinOnline Top 21 Social Media Superstars 2009 for Tina Brown;
MinOnline 2010 Best of the Web Awards: New Site (co-winner);
Webby Award nominations for Best Practices and Best News 2009
In August 2010, Time Magazine's review of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 named The Daily Beast among the top five news and information sites. (The Onion
The Onion
The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...
at 16, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
at 17, The Daily Beast at 18, National Geographic at 19, and WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
at 20)
The Daily Beasts writers include Christopher Buckley, Peter Beinart
Peter Beinart
-Early life and education:Beinart was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of South African immigrants. His mother, Doreen, works at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his father, Julian Beinart, is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His stepfather is theatre...
, Les Gelb, Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon is a Republican political advisor in the United States, Global Vice-Chairman of Hill & Knowlton, Inc., a leading international communications consultancy, providing services to local, multinational and global clients, and the President of Maverick Media. Originally a Democrat,...
, Meghan McCain
Meghan McCain
Meghan Marguerite McCain is an American columnist, author, and blogger. She is a daughter of U.S. Senator John McCain and Cindy Hensley McCain. McCain first received media attention in 2007 for her blog, McCain Blogette, on which she documented life on the campaign trail and mused about...
, John Avlon
John Avlon
John Phillips Avlon is senior columnist for Newsweek and the Daily Beast as well as a CNN contributor. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America...
, Lucinda Franks
Lucinda Franks
Lucinda Franks is a former staff writer for The New York Times, and she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic...
, Bruce Riedel
Bruce Riedel
Bruce Riedel is a Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, a Senior Advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a former CIA Analyst, a counter-terrorism expert, and an author. He retired in 2006 after 29 years with the Central...
, Lloyd Grove
Lloyd Grove
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast, the Web site run by Tina Brown and backed by Barry Diller. He is also a frequent contributor to New York Magazine...
, Tunku Varadarajan
Tunku Varadarajan
Tunku Varadarajan is a New York-based journalist who is editor of Newsweek International. Earlier, he was writer-at-large for The Daily Beast. He has also worked as executive editor for opinion at Forbes, assistant managing editor at the Wall Street Journal and as bureau chief of The Times of...
and Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast...
.
In a joint venture with Perseus Book Group, The Daily Beast formed a new imprint, Beast Books, that focuses on publishing timely titles of no more than 50,000 words by Daily Beast writers - first as e-book
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
s, and then as paperbacks in as little as four months. The first Beast Book was entitled Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America by John P. Avlon
John Avlon
John Phillips Avlon is senior columnist for Newsweek and the Daily Beast as well as a CNN contributor. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America...
.
Partnering with Diane von Furstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg, formerly Princess Diane of Fürstenberg , is a Belgian-American fashion designer best known for her iconic wrap dress. She initially rose to prominence when she married into the German princely House of Fürstenberg, as the wife of Prince Egon of Fürstenberg...
, Vital Voices
Vital Voices
Vital Voices Global Partnership is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization that works with women leaders in the areas of economic empowerment, women's political participation, and human rights. The organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C..-History:The nonprofit Vital...
and the UN Foundation in 2010, The Daily Beast brought some of the world's most inspiring female leaders together at the Hudson Theatre in New York City for the first annual Women in the World Summit. The mission of the three-day summit was to focus on the global challenges facing women, from equal rights and education, to human slavery, literacy and the power of the media and technology to affect change in women's lives. Attendees included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...
, Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president...
, Sunitha Krishnan
Sunitha Krishnan
Sunitha Krishnan, born in 1972, is an Indian social activist and chief functionary and co-founder of Prajwala, an institution that assists trafficked women and girls in finding shelter. The organization also helps pay for the education of five thousand children infected with HIV/AIDS in Hyderabad...
, Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Korbelová Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0...
, Edna Adan Ismail
Edna Adan Ismail
Edna Adan Ismail , born September 8, 1937 in Hargeisa, is the former Foreign Minister of the autonomous Somaliland region in northwest Somalia. She held this office from 2003 until 2006, and had previously served as Somaliland's Minister of Family Welfare and Social Development...
, Queen Rania of Jordan, Cherie Blair
Cherie Blair
Cherie Blair , known professionally as Cherie Booth QC, is a British barrister working in the legal system of England and Wales. She is married to the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair; the couple have three sons and one daughter...
and Valerie Jarrett
Valerie Jarrett
Valerie Bowman Jarrett is a senior advisor and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama administration. She is a Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, and civic leader...
.
On November 12, 2010 The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine. The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC...
and Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
announced that they would merge their operations in a joint venture to be owned equally by Sidney Harman
Sidney Harman
Sidney Harman was an American businessman active in education, government, industry, and publishing. He was the Chairman Emeritus of Harman International Industries, Inc. Harman served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce in 1977 and 1978. As of August 2010 Harman was also the publisher of...
and IAC/InterActiveCorp
IAC/InterActiveCorp
InterActiveCorp is an American internet company with over 50 brands across 40 countries headquartered in New York City...
. The new entity is to be called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company with Tina Brown as Editor-in-Chief and Stephen Colvin as CEO.
External links
- Official Random House biography
- Tina Brown's archived columns from The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
- Tina Brown's archived columns from The Huffington PostThe Huffington PostThe Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
- The Daily Beast