I applaud Tina Brown's courage to answer these often tough questions. When she reads this maybe she will see that her blindness to Weinstein's bullying is something she must own up to. Tina seems to write off his deceit and abusiveness as an issue of management style of a almost genius. Haven't others said the same about her behavior?
2
Ah the Tina worldview. All the world's a cocktail party, and all the men and women merely celebrity guests.
As in 'isn't what matters about a writer is whether they are widely talked about?'(presumably in her circle).
Answer to her rhetorical question: No.
3
Interesting, no mention of the Michele Bachmann Newsweek cover? A cover Ms. Brown would never have bestowed on Hillary Clinton. One can only assume Marchese was NOT permitted to discuss...
Whether the head of a publication is a man or a woman, the fact that most of the attention directed at the publication is almost exclusively about the editor in chief suggests either a publicity hungry editor or a dull publication – or both.
7
Lot of ego. Almost feels like she is insecure about her place in journalism history....
6
@jon I assume the first few comments are made by men.
Tina Brown is and has been a force in journalism.......an intelligent and successful one. Kudos to HER!
2
Superficial, exploitative. Validate other comments, anything she touches she ruins.
2
As an independent author and freelance editor myself, Brown's last words really resonated with me: "It’s a shame that editors get so little time now to think about stories and writers. Most of their time is spent having incredibly boring meetings about distribution and platforms and branded digital content. All this stuff, it’s just incredibly miserable. What I love, and what I’ve always loved, is telling stories."
Anyone who currently puts fingers to keyboard in the hopes of selling a book or article or script has the specter of running the marketing gauntlet haunting them with every word. The insanity of trying to reach your target audience through several types of social media, of trying to figure out the latest iteration of Amazon's opaque algorithms, and the money all this costs, kills creativity.
Audiences drive the AI to give them what they want and buzz drives audiences. Creativity takes a back seat to visibility. Who wins? Marketers.
Excellent interview with an amazing woman.
7
New Yorker used to have a blind writer from India that described America culture from his unique perspective. Tina Brown fired him soon after her arrival. I never heard of any of the "great" writers that she boasts of bringing in instead. Elsewhere in the article she says she wasn't aware of sexism, then turns around and blames"male management" to explain why she lost her job there. I'm not impressed by any of this.
5
She mentions her acumen at hiring people and I have to say, in my son's case she scooped him up after his magazines at Doubledown media, where he was founder and editor, crashed in 2008. If she hadn't offered him editor at large at the Daily Beast who knows what would have happened. She was always gracious and even gave him a party at her home when his book came about about that crash. Today he's the editor and chief content officer at Forbes. She is savvy. He flourished. And I am a grateful mom.
6
Fabulous interview!
2
When I read the interview, knowing nearly nothing about Tina Brown, my first thought was, "Wow! THAT's someone I would love to share drinks and conversation with!"
After reading the polarizing comments I thought, "Wow! Not only drinks but dinner AND desert too!"
6
When a woman’s career includes accomplishments like editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, why does the article need to lead with a quote about Harvey Weinstein being crazy? Brown tells us that she was too busy “blazing ahead” to be bothered, so why start there? The truly disturbing stories are from the sexism she encountered from male management mentioning “knitting” and “dress allowances.”
I am thankful for a woman that applied her talents to help guide an industry and fought to keep print media and true storytelling-the quality writing- alive in the information glut era the internet has created.
4
Everything she did since she left the New Yorker - flopped. I don't know HOW she still got gigs. I guess THAT''S "Everything Tina."
10
Anyone who uses the word ‘curate’ instead of ‘organize’ (as in, “I curate a dinner interview”) is someone I don’t take seriously. A lot of fluff, laced with preening, but under the surface, where’s the substance?
16
Would love to read that Bill Browder piece.
17
thank god for tina brown then now and always - she's got it all. a natural truth-teller/ "the plymouth rock of the me too movement" only tina can find the words.
9
David Remnick has been creating The New Yorker for our time, perhaps beyond. Under his guidance, the magazine is venturing into all areas of media, yet maintaining its distinctive voice and appearance, to the extent that's possible in digital form. The NYT is similar in reach and inventiveness, and I'm glad when the publications work together, as they seem to do.
As for Tina Brown, I stopped reading The New Yorker during her tenure. Not intentionally. I just found it duller, less relevant to whatever keeps me reading. Same for Ms. Brown's appearances on TV shows and, unfortunately, in this interview. At a certain point, I pretty much scanned her responses. Never could understand her appeal.
17
I read the story. I read the comments. They seem more disconnected than usual. Random almost.
Personally, I don’t have an opinion on Tina Brown. So now we’ve got that corner covered as well.
7
I am seventy years old and more than a little cranky. My goodness, I remember The Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine and Look magazine and (of course) the Readers' Digest--which I read avidly--and all these magazines that went belly up long long ago.
Sigh.
The sense I got reading this interview with Ms. Brown--and oh yes! I certainly read The New Yorker from time to time--and oh yes! I have fond memories of Newsweek--
--but the sense I get is of America--or rather Americans trapped on some vast plain in Russia of the Caucasus amid gale-force winds--
--shouting at each other, hoping that maybe one word out of twenty might be HEARD or rather OVERHEARD by another human being.
To say nothing of the enormous, disheartening mass of lies, falsehoods, distortions that rule the roost now in America--
--but let's not go there. Others have. In spades.
I wish Ms. Brown the best as she continues to long for CONTENT. Stuff. Stuff you could read. Remember. Profit by.
So little of that stuff is available in America, 2020.
So very little.
Sigh
56
I'd like to hear more about the "dress allowance"
31
@Kay Sieverding May be that was what helped cause the jump in the subscription price.
1
We used to subscribe to several magazines and still subscribe to The New Yorker. I plan to cancel that as well when it's due to be renewed this coming May. Although I love it, the subscription price (over $83.00 currently) keeps rising out of the range of most retirees, even though ads fill more and more of its pages.
National Geographic uses print so small that I need a strong magnifying glass to read it.
We have a great local library near us - it's simply cheaper to read my favorite magazines there... on a screen that magnifies everything.
16
@RAS
Try ordering the NY 3 months at a time for a buck on Amazon when its on sale.
11
@fast/furious Well, right now the New Yorker is $99.99 for a year and from where I stand that's the stratosphere. I'll stick with my subscriptions to NYT & WaPo, thank you very much. Lots to read, every day.
4
@RAS I have been reading (and subscribing to) the New Yorker since I was at University 40 years ago. The last 10 years I've lived in Switzerland and so get the digital edition. The writing in the magazine is superb. The topics nearly always of interest, even if I didn't believe so when I started a piece. I always recommend it to others, especially young people and to university students who need to improve their writing.
The New Yorker is worth the price at many multiples of what any of us pay now--especially when one is retired and has time to read all of it.
8
Whoever hired/jobbed Peter Schjeldahl and Adam Gopnik and Janet Malcolm gets my vote as best New Yorker editor of a generation.
25
@Ken Not to mention David Remnick and Anthony Lane. But I do think that today A O Scott is the best movie critic around. Writes very well and it’s all about the film not the writer!
1
As a long time subscriber to the New Yorker, I found the Brown years utterly demoralizing. She tried to turn it into hot pop, and utterly failed. Luckily she left before she managed to close the magazine.
49
She never once mentions the man of substance,originally working class,with no university degrees but a strong sense of ethics and with both an inborn and hard won,hard earned talent for discerning the social, political and economic intricacies of our world; her husband, Harold Evans. She is of course articulate and "clever," as opposed to his deep sympathetic "intelligence." She has a glossy sheen which transferred painlessly to the big dollar bland corporate conference arena.While Sir Harold a deep burnished surface that resonates deeply and broadly. She makes no mention of him and how his knowing hand has successfully guided, "edited" and proofread her life as he did for the nation at the London Times. While. an ambitious cleverness might strike notes off key, he quietly guides her in tune.
20
@ee mann One notices, if one is looking, that any story of an accomplished woman is frequently followed by assertions that some man - husband, father, partner, etc. - must be responsible for at least SOME of her success, if not all of it. We rarely hear of the women who actually HAVE played enormous unsung roles in their husband’s career success.
23
@ee mann
I agree; I admired him enormously too. Disappointing from Tina B.
8
@ee mann She wasn't asked about her personal life - why bring this up? I have no knowledge of Tina Brown, but found her answers in this interview to the point, specific and smart. She seems like a highly driven and highly capable person - good for her.
9
Many of the comments relative to the Royal Family of the UK, appear to be from people identified in places of the US. Their common complaint is that they are sick/repulsed/fed-up, etc. with the coverage given to and about, the Royals. Yet they fail to see that the appetite for info/gossip/news, etc. about the Royals is great enough that publishers and book authors continue to turn out vast amounts of press and phtos about them. Surely, someone is "taking the temperature" of the desire for such news. I also find it intriguing that so many in the US are immensely uninformed about the so-called "costs to the UK taxpayer" to maintain the Royals when the economic facts are the opposite. Incidentally, why are all the US critics opining about something in another country, when they already have their own mighty mess on their hands. Perhaps "attending to your own knitting" might be an appropriate comment here? A US Senate/Dept. of Justice/Attorney General/Chief Justice of the SCOTUS/ ad infinitum all abdicating their civic duty - and the enormous expense to the taxpayers of the US seem like fair game to be called "your own knitting".
21
Mainstream publishing is like a cat with one life. Brown is orthodox print publishing. Her digital experiments were flirtations. She doesn't want to be a player in the one-cat, one-life feline in a dog and pony show.
Either do I.
What Tina Brown has to say about the Royal Family has always existed as click-bait. Her analysis of the massive royal disruption of culture in the United Kingdom is a burlap bag of cats.
Brown always played cat and mouse with whatever the truth is. Remnick is stuck in the credibility constructs of the past. Producing a podcast with access to the kind of talent Remick has -- a lot of which Brown attracted in the first place -- is a dog chasing its own tail. How many times can you appear at the 92nd Street YMCA.
The real viability issue inherent to publishing, one that is not remotely touched upon in this interview, or in any other interview, where any other publishing accomplice interviews another accomplice, is what is the gatekeeper's role today. Editors are not the royal family. They're about as glamorous as my mother in-law. Brown brings some spark it. But the show is completely canned.
It's a can that has an echo when you speak into it. That echo is connected to a string that is affixed to another can. Perhaps someday Tina Brown will talk about how publishing itself is anchored to an undercurrent of meanness on the part of the people able to transcend the solid walls insiders like herself and Remnick have erected to keep the riffraff out.
7
given the shrinking resources of the NYT how in god's name can this article have been published given what is unfolding in the world and NYT being a day late and a dollar short on every major story in the nation and the world.
I'm sorry, the NYT surrendered any and all pretense of having global reach decades ago.
17
Why should anyone care about the future of the Royal Family any more than we would are about the future of gaslighters for public streets? It is an anachronism. They should all get jobs.
21
Please sir, may I have some more?
Excellent interview, with deeply inquisitive questions and truth-baring responses. If Tina Brown had to suffer the slings and arrows of such misogyny in the workplace, imagine what commoners like most of us have had to endure? It is so past time that all of the rocks have to be turned over for the snakes to be exposed. Keep telling the stories!
As for the future in writing for the masses, please continue doing it. We all need some hope to cling to, a lifeline to truth.
31
Conference companies like Ms. Brown's and Arriana Huffington 's belong in the category of Retailing Virtue for profit to an audience wanting to feel they've done something for the poor, the endangered, the desperate....without having actually done anything except line the conference company's pockets. Davos is the perfect location for this type of nonsense; attended only by the 1% and media thereby getting a whack at wealthy connections and media coverage and whiling away one's spare time in luxurious surroundings - win, win, win!
53
@Juno
Mika Brzezinski also.
9
Not mentions about TBs success at The New Yorker was the very funny cartoons. Today the choices are predicated on so many double-double entendres that their tedious insertions between stories serve as a distraction. I am sure the cartoonists themselves have an opinion on current rejections.
15
Brown's appearances in "Spy" were always entertaining.
2
Having Roseanne Barr guest edit the New Yorker is nuts. I am with Ms. Kincaid on this one!
17
When TALK magazine folded, they didn't even give a refund to their subscribers. Were they that strapped for money?
The New Yorker Magazine is infinitely better with David Remnick as editor.
24
I thought Mr. Marchese was needlessly combative and judgmental in his interview. Nearly every question seemed to contain an accusation about Ms. Brown, her history, her motivations. He seems to accuse her of making the New Yorker a gossip rag, failing to stop Harvey Weinstein's predation, and being a prima donna cavorting with the rich. I suspect a male media figure of Ms. Brown's stature would not have had to deal with a cross-examination in a similar piece.
21
I'll buy Tina Brown's buzz any day. That's why she's an icon - she knows we're looking for great stories to sink into on the couch with a big box of chocolates. Will I be in line to buy her new book about the royal family? Of course!
24
Excellent piece. Thank you.
11
Joyous interview! Really felt the full force of TB coming through here.
13
fabulous read
10
Thre will always be an England and the English will always demand the right and privilege of lining up in a queue, with the monarch at the head of the queue. Americans have no understanding of the importance of queuing up to the English soul.
15
Tina's ego and vanity shine through. She repeatedly takes credit for what she proclaims to have been successful changes to The New Yorker, for example, but never admits to errors in judgment.
17
@Georgette Hasiotis
Ego and vanity are almost always major drivers for very successful people. And who offers up examples of failures in an interview when they are not asked about?
Beware the green-eyed monster; he diminishes us.
11
@Georgette Hasiotis
I am glad she is such an icon for white women. She never knew what Weinstein was all about because he was helping her
The world of white women is all about our needs and wants
She is successful because she is white connected and works so hard
Give us all a break next she will tell us she has real minorities friends who aren’t cleaning her houses
Just tell the truth and stop with these phoney interviews
6
With the exception of the brilliant Anthony Lane, I have to agree with Renata Adler on this one.
4
I disagree. If charles were a better father to his children then harry wouldn't have felt the need to estrange himself.
11
@Bis K His birth order, his age at his mother's death,and his temperament (tendency to depression) are likely large influences in his difficulties stepping into adulthood. He married someone to take charge and yet nurture him, like his mother. Given how well William has turned out, I don't think it's fair to judge Charles' parenting. Charles, who could only ever be his father, never the missing mother.
26
@Bis K I disagree. Charles has and is a very good father.
14
@Bis K You underestimate the depth of grief that can come from the sudden death of a mother when she is finally finding her place in the world. Diana was neurotic and angry but why not? She was a grievously wronged woman, to use on old-fashioned term, wronged by her husband and by her own relatives at the palace and by the queen. Her only joy was her children. Harry would be somewhat less hurt if his father had been a better spouse, not a better father.
55
Abolishing monarchie is the inevitable stap to a nation's adulthood.
Strangly, half of the USA electorate craves a despotic monarch.
36
@Sfreud Utter nonsense. What we "crave" is a warrior willing to take on entrenched entities and slay them.
3
@SoCalGal And instead we got Trump.
19
@SoCalGal
That's what you tell yourself, eh? Hilarious. Truly hilarious.
5
Tina Brown's "Vanity Fair Diaries" was a page-turner. Not just insightful, but incisive critiques of those with whom she had just broken-bread. She lived it and she reported it, candidly. An absorbing narrative of '80s decadence, her striving, and others'. And wonderful to listen to her voice narrating her story in an audiobook format.
22
See reminds me of my mother in-law. Both good and bad. Geezz!
5
Glamour aside, Tina Brown is at her heart a journalist. This is what comes through in this interview. She's got a nose for news, for good writing and for the story. I hope she continues to lend her strengths to our global dialogue, whatever anyone thinks about her style. She is very smart. And her sort of "who cares?" attitude is very British media. As in, trash them to their face, then go have a drink together. No feelings hurt. Americans don't get that attitude.We are so sincere all the time.
43
I'm ready to find out on Royalty and billionaires boys both. If we promise to miss you will you please go away? Far, far away? The world would turn much better without either concept.
10
"I'm ready to find out on Royalty and billionaires boys both.
What?
7
This is a joke, right ? the "Royal" family has zero impact on the average person in the UK and the money wasted on them could be spent on the NHS. We could keep all the dopey costumes and elect or appoint a 10-year head of state. I nominate David Attenborough for the first term.
People make arguments that the "Royal" family bring i more than they cost should explain why France has many more tourists than the UK and Palace of Versailles has the most visitors of any attraction in Europe.
34
@John
Because France is an inherently more beautiful and interesting place to visit.
27
Britain is an island so more people can travel to France. London beats Paris in just about everything from lowbrow to highbrow. As for the Royals, they are not that great as Heads of State but the US alternative is and since thre days of Jefferson/Washington far worse. Even many Americans would chose the Queen over Trump in just about every contest forwhich Head of State would you choose.
5
The last thing the world needs is another royals book. " sliding into irrelevance" ? Already there decades ago.
21
@Scott D
The last thing the thinking world needs is another lie from trump and his do and know nothing family
I would take a story about the royals and how queen Elizabeth helped the war effort than read another hate story from a draft dodger and a bigot
15
Brilliant interview with a brilliant woman. She's endlessly fascinating.
20
"People are so exhausted by instability that if the monarchy collapsed, that would be massively disruptive."
A tension exists between the psychological need for continuity and the fact that the useless life of luxury makes so many royals into useless twits. As in so many other areas of life, Major League Baseball may offer an answer.
There are the big leagues and then there are the minor leagues. Players move up and down the ladder based on performance. While the monarchy already gets much structure from dukes, barons and the royal hierarchy, more flexibility is now needed. The hereditary king or queen will always be just that. But on lower levels one needs a mechanism for shuffling and reassignment based on merit.
There should be a blue-ribbon commission empowered to rearrange the royal underlings based on a periodic review of their behavior, say on a five-year cycle. A set of performance standards would be adopted, and each upper echelon royal below the crown level would be evaluated against these standards. Based on these evaluations, royals would move up or down -- as to office, perks, duties and support money. That way the best royals would get the best positions, the most public exposure and the greatest responsibility.
And the competition would give needed shape and content to otherwise meaningless and empty lives. Prince Andrew, for example, pondering how a stay with Jeffrey Epstein will play at his upcoming review, might opt for visiting a pizza parlor instead.
13
@woofer The attempt to rank British universities to apportion funding has hardly been a success story. I’m dubious as to whether ranking the royals would have the desired consequences.
4
Must take exception to the praise for the “self aware” Jeff Toobin, but adore Jane Myers and her books. Enjoy it when the New Yorker has something by Jill Lepore, but it’s mostly hit and miss. Enjoyed Vanity Fair way back when. Don’t read it anymore. The women’s events like “know your value” is making the organizer rich, not empowering anyone.
The Parnas in-depth piece sounds very intriguing, if done fairly and truthfully it would shatter the world. Ditto on Bloomberg’s buying the presidential campaign on the basis of his record as NYC Mayor. Illegal, undemocratic third term, and leaving the city with the most segregated public school system in the country. Or how about a good piece on Boris Johnson’s smashing of the UK Finally, someone should unmask the boorish and mean girl, Piers Morgan. It was disgusting how he carried a long destructive campaign against Megan Markle Perhaps Tina might consider taking over The Atlantic magazine. Since James Fallows retired as editor , the magazine feels like reading The Tablet.
38
I subscribe to more than a dozen periodicals just because they provide information to the masses. It the only way to keep that information flowing.
9
As someone in the single copy magazine business both at time of launch and now, she's dead wrong about Talk Magazine. It was doomed to failure from the start.
Evidence? The first issue completely sold out (1M+ units sold) and went back to print (Hillary's first interview after Bill affair). The next issue sold 10% of copies printed.
That says that more than a million people willingly purchased the magazine and decided they didn't like it enough to purchase again. No other issues sold more than 125K copies.
What was wrong? It was high-brow material packaged in a cheap, tabloid-like format complete with ink that smeared and blurry photography.
Content was fine; the package was ill-conceived.
14
In the age of Trump, Boris Johnson, and all the disruptive change the world is experiencing, the British Royals are very small fry indeed. I personally could deal with their demise as a publicly-financed national luxury, particularly since they wouldn't go the way of Charles II, and still have appetite for dinner.
10
The loss of the Royal family would have less impact that Miss Brown suggests.
Brittan may not be ready move on but the rest of the Commonwealth is.
26
Good for you, Tina Brown!
5
The New Yorker is boring and full of itself without Tina Brown. Ditto for Vanity Fair. I loved her ability to merge the worlds of entertainment, the wealthy and politics and package it all with great writing, photography and editing. A lost art.
33
Re the New Yorker I was never part of the anti-Tina Brown faction but I didn't miss her when she left. Was, is a great magazine.
23
@M
The New Yorker under editor David Remnick is a great magazine.
But I agree that Vanity Fair has become a terrible bore.
35
@GeorgeN Graydon Carter succeeded Brown and made Vanity Fair into a must-read magazine. After him, the downfall.
13
I miss Tina Brown arranging my reading.
20
Throughout history, going back to Shakespeare, Virgil, and Homer, royalty has all been about wealth and power, and then once democracy edged in, figurehead status has devolved to reality TV. The Windsor-Coburgs seem to have finally won for once and all, they should take their trophy and retire.
10
Royalty in any form is racist. The British royal family is an obsolete and racist institution. Does anyone really believe that the Queen and King are above the rest of the citizens, except by the good luck of their birth and wealth? Let them all step down and run charities, while surrounding their millions and millions (tax dollars surrendered to them just to look pretty!) to the health system.
42
@John
do you mean "surrounding"?
1
@John Isn't the notion of nation, at its base, racist? Admittedly, my knowledge of history is incomplete, but has there ever been a nation that was formed by bringing together disparate peoples representing different cultures, religions and colors to form a common governmental unit that benefits every citizen?
11
@Neil Dunford
USA
And yes, I agree that it was and is far less than perfect, but that was the general idea.
7
All these great “insights” and editing chops and she never managed to figure out who Harvey Weinstein was? Hmmm. It feels as if Tina was too consumed by the glamour, fluff and money to really look into the real substance of Weinstein. Harvey was a monster that existed for decades.
As for the British royal family, that dead horse has been flogged to a point of being way past its sell-by date. Isn’t it time the world move past the royals and their trivial lives? My dog has more personality than that crowd. Care for an interview?
Ms. Brown is a textbook definition of the ancien regime that exists in today’s world of wealth and power. And what has it brought us to? Trump? Jeffery Epstein? Prince Andrew? Mark Zuckerberg? Alan Dershowitz? Thanks, but no thanks.
Like all creaking institutions and defenders of the rear guard, Ms. Brown has one common trait with them all: They never see it coming.
103
@Mark Young As a woman who worked in the film industry during Harvey's most powerful years, I can tell you that we all knew he was a horrific bully, but we didn't know about the sexual/power abuse he was working on women. I would also add that I, like so many other women working in entertainment, believed that the sexual/power abuse dynamic was something we had to endure in order to get the careers we wanted. As for what you call Ms. Brown's "ancien regime" role in popular culture, she was a powerhouse when she burst onto the scene and, as a young woman striving to be part of the entirely male-dominated cultural elite of the 90's, a personal hero of mine.
27
@Bottleblonde ' A young woman striving to be part of the male-dominated scene' ? She rode in on her husband's coattails!
16
"People are so exhausted by instability that if the monarchy collapsed, that would be massively disruptive."
Ridiculous! The monarchy these days is nothing more than tabloid fodder. Nothing important would actually happen. The earth would continue to revolve around the sun. Everyone would save 5 pounds on their tax bill. Britain would continue its slow slide into obscurity.
55
@Obroni You understimate the importance of the queue in the British soul and British culture. Children line up with delight when told to do so. My Irish cousin, second in command at a good private schiool, now a top private school (without the label of "public"), demonstrated this love of the queue when i visited. Nationally the monarch is at the head of the queue. A cousin-in-law, a second cousin to the queen but of no royal or social or financial significance whatsoever because he was a continental cousin, raised Catholic, and all the family wealth was seized by the Soviets (his parents were anti-Nazi, unlike many of the other continental relatives of the queen) deplored the queeu psychology of the English. But there it is, and the monarch iks at the head of the queue socially and in the soul.
3
She is extremely interesting to read.
15
The Royals are just another mega rich family. We have big problems over here. I really could care less about this celeb family.
23
@Sharon
The Royals are more than mega rich. They own a significant portion of the cultural artifacts important to Britain’s history. For example,
The Queen personally owns all of the DaVinci manuscripts in The UK, as well as a significant portion of historic art work. She owns all of the crowns and other jewelry she wears, other than the Crown Jewels.
2
I do get rather annoyed when the very, very rich like Ms. Brown, tell us that upending the social structure will somehow create chaos that is bad for the lower classes. I can't imagine what her motivation might be...
It's sort of like Bill Gates throwing a hissy fit and threatending to leave the country and vote for Trump, if he had to pay more taxes.
54
Can we please stop caring about the British royal family? All it takes is for each one of us to ask "what is the point of them in our lives?" Honestly, the coverage would imply that their importance is earth-shaking.
30
when was the last time tina brown was relevant? when she was destroying magazines?
18
@Richard Mclamore
Whether you like the changes she brought about or not, she was certainly relevant.
5
The Royal Family should pay off Harry & Meghan, take away their titles (no Sussex/Harry & Meghan Windsor) and make them sign an NDA. Clear the bad air. Gone and dusted. Move forward without any worry.
14
@P&L
Why does it bother you so much. Is it costing you anything.
What has these two young people done to.
You are their family to turn their backs on them who does that
21
@P&L Cap Ferrat = Brit living in France maybe and opiniating.
8
Despite my grandparents having come here from England, I am sick to death of all the "news" about the royal family. Didn't we fight a war to get away from all that?
32
@B Lundgren Yes, I thought so, too......
3
@Arnold Rothenbuescher And yet here we are, with a portion of the population worshiping King Trump.
A bit dated, long in the tooth, Ms. Brown's celebration of celebrity, including her own.
56
Love Tina Brown...an American Icon
13
If you look at magazine articles from the time when the internet had just begun - 80's, early 90's - there is a depth and precision and yes intelligence to the writing which I just don't see today, which now seems to be a lot of breathless reporting with a marketing spin on top.
35
Who cares? I can't speak for the Brits, but here in America I doubt that any disruption would occur in the least. We Americans left the UK behind 244 years ago, which the media seems to have chosen to ignore for the sake of ad dollars.
7
The thread running through Tina Brown’s professional incarnations and personal life is a sycophancy for the rich, the powerful and for celebrities.
Media content arising from such sycophancy produces a sheen of fascination because these types are regularly foisted on the public through the mainstream media, but over time one finds it repetitious and full.
David Remnick restored a measure of intellectualism to The New Yorker, and should be congratulated. He would make a much more interesting interviewee than Brown ....
83
@William M. Palmer, Esq.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Although you say, "but over time one finds it repetitious and full." Full? Just wondering what you mean.
"David Remnick restored a measure of intellectualism to The New Yorker, and should be congratulated. He would make a much more interesting interviewee than Brown ...."
I completely agree; The New Yorker became a bit fluffy under T.B.'s editorship.
13
@Pavot He meant "dull" not "full". A modern typo.
6
@Pavot
Typing error - meant to type:
Media content arising from such sycophancy produces a sheen of fascination because these types are regularly foisted on the public through the mainstream media, but over time one finds it repetitious and dull.
Perils of the iPhone....
6
I think the "Royal" family is the least of the ever-shrinking Great Britain's concerns. I'm surprised Scotland hasn't moved to independence yet.
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Tina Brown brings a certain gravitas and worldliness to her work that many of the journalists who overtly criticize her can only dream of.
Keep up the excellent work, Ms. Brown - - especially when it comes to offering us keen and fascinating insight into the inner workings of the British royal family!
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@Robert J. Wlkinson What does gravitas have to do with how the royal family operates? It's amusing to me - as a US based Brit - how much more people here care about the RF than they do back home. The latest pieces of royal flotsam - or is it jetsam? - appear to have made megabucks for themselves with JP Morgan in Miami. Take off a zero or two and you might be close to what they could command for a speech in London.
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@Robert J. Wlkinson tina brown & gravitas: more like tina brown and gravy train.
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@Robert J. Wlkinson I agree, I used to read Vanity Fair from cover to cover when she was running it.
God, so many great articles. Movies, politics, fashion, art, music, social issues...every issue was chock full of interesting things to read.
I miss those days.
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Not sure what to make of the flippant way she blows past the obvious riposte to her complaint that no one does serious profiles anymore.
Where was the in-depth profile of Mattis, she asks. When Marchese points out that it was in fact in the New Yorker, her reply? "Yeah, maybe I missed it. Somehow I didn’t ever feel I was getting it at the time I wanted." Then she goes on to expand on her point, ignoring that she was, in fact, wrong in this case.
As I thought when I first encountered her, I still can't help but feeling that nothing dissuades her from her already-reached conclusions. She, and what she feels about her subjects, is the story.
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@Charlie She did say 'where was it. I'm sure someone did it'.
To which he then replied it was in The New Yorker.
So she didn't ignore it, and she wasn't even wrong, she did say that someone must have done it which they did.
Her point was more that there is not enough of that out there anymore.
You clearly don't like her and have a pre-made opinion of her.
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Tina Brown has always been very sharp, very clever and very witty. She is missed. She is especially missed (as is Graydon Carter!) when we browse the pages of Vanity Fair and now deplore the decline of what used to be a truly terrific monthly magazine.
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@India-Jane
Yes, I was just thinking yesterday how bad VANITY FAIR had become. It's little more than a wannabe PEOPLE for richer readers. I'll be dropping my subscription. It surprises me that I so miss Grayden and TIna, whose views were much wider than current leadership's at the magazine. Perhaps we owe a nod to S. I. Newhouse too.
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@India-Jane I miss Tina Brown too and I want her to know that wherever she goes/writes/speaks, there are millions of us who follow/read/willing to pay for the privilege!
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@India-Jane
I used to read Vanity Fair religiously, going back to the mid-80's when it came back to life. I loved it until Mr. Carter left. The very first issue under the new editor-in-chief told me all I needed to know - it is no longer "must reading". And I miss it.
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A great story. I've been a fan of Tina Brown since her Vanity Fair days. I enjoyed Talk and was sorry to see it disappear. Too bad we don't see her very often on TV with her wry comments on the craziness that passes for today's news. She is one of the few people in today's journalism that I would really love to meet.
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