Tina Brown’s Daily Beast Arrives: ‘Sensibility, Darling’

Does this mean magazines are officially dead? Tina Brown, magazine editrix extraordinaire, has finally launched the long chattered about The Daily Beast (named after the paper in the Evelyn Waugh novel Scoop). What is the Beast? Well, for one, it’s not another news aggregator, it “sifts, sorts, and curates.”

It’s a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors. The Daily Beast is the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist. It allows you to lead the conversation, rather than simply follow it.

This per the very funny Q&A with Tina Brown that’s currently posted at the site, during which Brown also speaks to whether she’s jealous of Arianna Huffington, plans to bankrupting Barry Diller, and whether quitting The New Yorker was the biggest mistake of her life.

It wasn’t: “To every thing (turn turn turn) there is a season. If I’d stayed at The New Yorker I’d never have written a best seller.” If nothing else the woman has a sense of humor. To wit:

Why are reporters so mean to powerful women? Don’t worry. Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.

The Q&A alone is enough to convince us it’s worth a bookmark. But there’s more! Today’s front page contributors include Bill Clinton recommending bailout books to read, and a “video cheat sheet,” which is collection of black comedians discussing black presidents. In the Blogs & Stories section Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about the recently banned Jewel of Medina, which is out today.

Brown has picked and interesting time to enter the fray. We are thirty days away from an election and readers are deluged with established places offering them both coverage and a platform. However if anyone is going to be able to make waves in this climate, Brown is probably as safe a bet as one could make.

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