Tina Brown

Cofounder of The Daily Beast; former magazine executive

• Born: November 21, 1953
• Place of Birth: Maidenhead, England

Primary Company/Organization:The Daily Beast

Introduction

Tina Brown parlayed a successful career in print media, notably at Vanity Fairand The New Yorker, into leading roles with the website TheDailyBeast.com and Newsweekmagazine. Noteworthy for her ability to find content that is wildly popular with the reading public, Brown has sometimes been accused of relying on sensational and low-brow material. A member of the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame, Brown has translated her success in traditional media to new platforms, providing a model for other media conglomerates seeking to make a profit with web-based publications.

Early Life

Christina Hambley Brown was born on November 21, 1953, in Maidenhead, England, the daughter of film producer George Hambley Brown and Bettina Iris Mary Kohr, a former assistant to the actor Sir Laurence Olivier. Brown has an older brother, Christopher. She grew up in the Thames River village of Little Marlow and was educated in boarding schools. Her father achieved some success in the film industry, including producing five movies starring Margaret Rutherford that were based on Agatha Christie's novels. Brown has described herself as “lively” as a child, often engaging in behaviors that resulted in the approbation of school authorities. Expelled from three different schools, she was frequently punished for her irreverent attitude and noncompliance with school rules. Brown nevertheless excelled at school and entered St. Anne's College at Oxford University when she was seventeen years old.

At Oxford, Brown studied English literature, ultimately graduating with a bachelor's degree. A polished and insightful writer even as an undergraduate, Brown wrote for Oxford's literary journal, Isis, and had work published with the left-wing British cultural and political magazine The New Statesman while still enrolled as a student. While writing for the Isis, Brown was able to interview a variety of authors and celebrities, including actor Dudley Moore and journalist Auberon Waugh, the son of novelist Evelyn Waugh. Brown's attempts as a dramatist met with some success: A play she wrote while at Oxford won a student competition run by The Sunday Times, and a later effort was produced by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduating from Oxford in 1973, Brown turned immediately to free-lance journalism and used Waugh's influence to advance her writing career.

A weekly column Brown wrote for the literary humor magazine Punch helped her to win the Catherine Pakenham Award, given annually to the best journalist under the age of twenty-five. In 1978, Australian Gary Bogard hired the then twenty-five-year-old Brown to edit a small magazine he had purchased, the Tatler. Although little known when Brown assumed her editorship, Tatler was soon transformed into a slick, glossy magazine. Believing that the public often purchased magazines from newsstands based on the appearance of the cover, Brown hired top photographers, such as Norman Parkinson and David Bailey, and prominently displayed their work on Tatler's cover. Using her old friend Waugh as a resource, Brown solicited articles by writers such as Julian Barnes, Dennis Potter, and Waugh himself, thereby increasing the profile of the magazine. During this time, Brown frequently wrote for Tatler herself and discovered that issues of the magazine containing articles about Princess Diana always led to increased sales at the newsstands. Brown's changes were successful: The Tatler's readership increased fourfold, and the publication garnered critical acclaim as well. After Bogard sold the Tatler to publishing giant Condé Nast in 1982, Brown resigned as editor and returned to writing. After a year, however, Condé Nast was able to lure her to the United States to edit its troubled publication Vanity Fair.

Life's Work

Condé Nast had resurrected Vanity Fair, which had been popular in the 1920s, in March 1983. Inaugural editor Richard Locke lasted only three months at the helm before he was replaced by Leo Lerman, but this change had little effect on Vanity Fair's sales. With monthly sales of 200,000 and only twelve pages of advertising per issue, the magazine was failing. Brown's transformation of the Tatler led Condé Nast's chief executive officer (CEO), in a last-ditch effort to save Vanity Fair, to hire Brown as a contributing editor to assist with a turnaround. Named editor-in-chief on January 1, 1984, Brown quickly made changes to improve the magazine's circulation.

Considering Vanity Fair dull, Brown set about to transform it, using many of the techniques she had earlier tried at the Tatler. She hired television producer Dominick Dunne to write a true-crime report about the trial of his daughter's murderer (she was killed in 1982. Titled “Justice: A Father's Account of the Trial of His Daughter's Killer,” the piece was highly successful and launched Dunne on a long-lasting and lucrative writing career. To produce more eye-catching covers, Brown encouraged photographers to be creative and to present images that had not been seen before. To that end, Harry Benson captured an image of Ronald and Nancy Reagan dancing at a White House reception and Helmut Newton created a portrait of accused murderer Claus von Bülow with his mistress. Brown herself wrote about Britain's Princess Diana, discovering that issues with her image on the cover dramatically spiked sales. Brown also changed the editorial policies of the magazine, combining stories focusing on foreign affairs and political matters with stories about celebrities and true-crime accounts. These changes proved effective, and Vanity Fair's circulation soared.

Under Brown's stewardship, Vanity Fair's monthly sales increased from 200,000 to 1.2 million copies. Advertising pages increased to more than 1,400 by 1991, and circulation revenues were reputed to top $20 million per issue. Brown's strategy of using eye-catching covers paid off: Vanity Fair sold 55 percent of issues sent to newsstands, well above the industry-wide average of 42 percent. Brown's efforts were also successful critically: The magazine won four National Magazine Awards under her editorship, including a 1989 prize for overall excellence.

In 1992, Condé Nast asked Brown if she would move to Vanity Fair's sister publication, The New Yorker. She agreed to do so and edited that magazine through 1998. Although the announcement of her editorship was met with skepticism by some, Brown was credited with making The New Yorker more relevant while maintaining its values and quality. She increased the magazine's use of photographs, color, and coverage of topical interests. The New Yorker's sales base increased slightly during Brown's tenure, from approximately 650,000 in 1992 to more than 800,000 in 1997, with newsstand sales increasing 145 percent. Under Brown, The New Yorker won multiple awards for excellence, including four George Polk Awards, ten National Magazine Awards, and five Overseas Press Club Awards.

In 1998, Brown left Condé Nast to join a new media company funded by Miramax Films and the Hearst Corporation. In this position, Brown launched the monthly magazine Talk, which reached sales of more than 670,000 per month before shutting down in 2002, and a publishing imprint, Miramax Books, which published many best sellers.

After a brief foray into broadcasting for MSNBC and writing a best-seller, The Diana Chronicles, about Princess Diana, Brown in 2008 joined forces with Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp (IAC) to launch The Daily Beast, an online magazine that combines journalism with links to other news sources. The Daily Beast quickly became one of the top fifty Internet sites and received a warm reception from writers who had previously been unwilling to write for an online publication. In 2010, The Daily Beast announced that it was merging with Newsweek magazine to form the Newsweek Daily Beast Company, with Brown to serve as editor of both publications. Brown left The Daily Beast in 2013.

Brown has long worked as an advocate for women, and in 2010 she partnered with Diane von Furstenberg, Vital Voices Global Partnership, and the United Nations Foundation to sponsor the first annual Women in the World Summit. The summit focused on an array of issues facing women, including education, equal rights, literacy, global challenges, human slavery, and access to health care. Drawing a host of celebrities, the summit was attended by Madeleine Albright, Cherie Blair, Hillary Clinton, and Meryl Streep, among others. To spread the annual summit to additional locations around the world, Brown formed Tina Brown Live Media and became its CEO in 2014.

Brown published a second well-received work of nonfiction, The Vanity Fair Diaries, 1983–1992, in 2017. The following year she created a weekly interview-format podcast called TBD with Tina Brown, which she hosted as well. In 2022, she published a sequel to The Diana Chronicles, The Palace Papers. In 2023, Brown hosted Truth Tellers, the inaugural Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism at the Royal Institute of British Architects to honor her late husband's legacy. The summit was a collaborative effort among Brown, her family, Reuters, and Durham University. In 2022, Brown was honored with Women in Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award given by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).

Personal Life

From birth, Brown was comfortable dealing with actors, performers, writers, and other celebrities she met as a result of her father's connections within the British film industry. Not only was Brown able to make many connections that would serve her well later in her career; she also had a keen understanding of the public's fascination with celebrities and those who surround them. Brown also developed a keen sense of the visual due to her frequent viewing of films.

Throughout her time at Oxford, Brown considered a career as a serious writer, working to develop her skills as a playwright and dating novelist Martin Amis. In 1973, the editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans, was given some of Brown's writings, which led to her receiving freelance assignments from various editors at the newspaper. After a relationship developed between Brown and Evans, Brown sought to maintain the appearance of impartiality in her writing and resigned from The Sunday Times to write instead for the rival Sunday Telegraph. Brown married Evans in 1981 at the East Hampton home of longtime Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee. Brown and Evans have two children, George, born in 1986, and Isabel, born in 1990. After Evans was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 for his services to journalism, Brown automatically became Lady Evans (although she seldom goes by that title).

Bibliography

Bachrach, J. Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power. New York: Free Press, 2001. Print.

Brooks, D. Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. New York: Simon, 2000. Print.

Brown, Tina. The Diana Chronicles. Doubleday, 2007. Print.

Brown, Tina. The Palace Papers. Crown, 2022. Print.

Byers, Dylan. “Tina Brown, Media Darling.” Brandweek 52.8 (2011). Print.

Florida, R. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life. New York: Basic, 2003. Print.

Jacobs, Alexandra. "Tina Brown Catches Up With Royal Intrigue in 'The Palace Papers'." The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/books/review-palace-papers-house-of-windsor-tina-brown.html. 8 Mar. 2024.

"Sir Harry Evans Global Summit Attracts Huge Names from Journalism Worldwide." Durham University, 10 May 2023, www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2023/05/truth-tellers-sir-harry-evans-summit/. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.