Barry Diller reportedly dropped close to $20 million on Tina Brown's Daily Beast, so earlier rumors that Tina was eyeballing the Newsweek editor's job seemed too ungrateful to be true. But...what if she could do both?

Tina insisted last week that rumors of her candidacy for Newsweek editor were "not serious." But today, Keith Kelly lays out a new rumored scenario: a merger of the Daily Beast with Newsweek's digital operations, which would allow Tina to run both. It would give Newsweek a big-name editor; it would give Tina a return to big-name magazines, her true love; and it would give Barry Diller, perhaps, a faint ray of hope that someday the Daily Beast could offer at least some return on his investment. The only one willing to comment was Tina Brown:

"The Daily Beast's audience and revenues have grown beyond our wildest hopes of two years ago," she insisted. "I have no intention of leaving either it or my wonderful partnership with Barry Diller."

Try parsing that. One could argue that her quote does not rule out the above scenario one bit! This is the most interesting thing to happen to Newsweek since all of its employees left.

[NYP]