Tina Brown Reportedly Out at The Daily Beast
The mighty rise, and fall, and rise, and fall, and rise again... and fall? Celebueditor and Princess Di necromancer Tina Brown is reportedly not going to have her contract renewed by her financial bosses at The Daily Beast.
Peter Lauria at Buzzfeed reports:
According to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, The Daily Beast parent company IAC owned by media mogul Barry Diller does not plan to renew Brown’s contract when it expires in January.
He says no decision has been made as to the future of The Daily Beast itself.
Why might Barry Diller have decided to pull the plug on the Great Tina Brown Experiment? A few possible reasons:
- Diller disastrously put her in charge of Newsweek, which she proceeded to editorially embarrass and run into the ground until its dessicated husk was sold off for scrap.
- The ill-fated merger of Newsweek and The Daily Beast succeeded only in running off a large portion of an editorial staff, something which was never, of course, Tina Brown's fault.
- Diller has been pouring tens of millions of dollars per year down The Daily Beast's throat for close to five years now, and it's still not making money.
Makes pretty good sense really.
Update: Politico reports that Tina Brown will be starting what is generously described as "her own company, Tina Brown Live Media," which will, it sounds like, mostly put on events.
Make no mistake: this is a major failure for Tina Brown.
Update 2: Here is The Daily Beast's own cringingly hero-worshipy story on Brown's departure, which reads like an official Soviet press release describing Stalin's vacation plans. It also implies that Brown is leaving of her own accord. Your move, Barry Diller.
