Tina Brown Talks to Guardian About Supposed Rivalry with Arianna Huffington
The money quote from Sunday’s interview with Tina Brown in Guardian isn’t about how the The Daily Beast-Newsweek merger has been going (“I am that ant rolling the boulder up the hill,” said Brown) or about the scalding criticism she has received from sites like Gawker in the past (“Snark is the medium of the day,” she dismissed) — but about the supposed rivalry between her and Arianna Huffington.
“Nobody writes about the editors of Slate and Politico like that,” said Brown. “I guess it’s like girl-on-girl action. Everybody likes girl-on-girl action.”
Brown mentioned girl-on-girl action! Yeah, that’s basically all we needed to hear.
Guardian wasn’t above adding a little fuel to the girl-on-girl fire. After quoting Brown as saying “Arianna is a really old girlfriend and I’ve known her for 30 years. I’ve always been fond of her and I think her success is marvellous,” the article went on to cite an anonymous source:
This best friends scenario doesn’t quite ring true for one long-time friend of both women, who laughs and describes them as “total rivals . . . whatever else, Arianna helps you realise you’ve got to be at the top table too”.
Nicely done. With a few more anonymous “friends” like these, the Huffington-Brown rivalry will dominate most other interviews with the two moguls for a long time to come.
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