Tina Brown

Infobox Person
name = Christina Hambley Brown

---

image_size =
caption = Tina Brown speaking at Barnes and Nobles about "The Diana Chronicles".
birth_date = birth date and age|1952|11|21
birth_place = Maidenhead, England
occupation = journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of "The Diana Chronicles"

Tina Brown, Lady Evans (born Christina Hambley Brown on November 21, 1952, in Maidenhead, England) is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of "The Diana Chronicles", a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, a personal friend. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005. She became the editor-in-chief of "Tatler" magazine at the age of 25, and rose to prominence in the American media industry as the editor of the magazines "Vanity Fair" from 1984 to 1992 and of "The New Yorker" from 1992 to 1998. In 2007, she was named to the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. [cite news |url= http://www.nypost.com/seven/09042007/business/mag_nificence.htm |title= Mag-nificence |first= Keith J. |last= Kelly |work= New York Post |date= September 4, 2007 |accessdate= 2007-09-30] She has also been honored with four George Polk Awards, five Overseas Press Club awards, and ten National Magazine Awards.Cite web
url= http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=59916&view=full_sptlght
title= author spotlight
work= Random House
date= 2007
accessdate= 2007-10-15] She is currently writing a non-fiction work on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Biography

She and her elder brother, Christopher Hambley Brown, grew up in Little Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, on the outskirts of London. Her parents, George Hambley Brown and Bettina Iris Mary (Kohr) Brown, were prominent figures in the British film industry. George produced the first Agatha Christie films starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. His other films included "The Chiltern Hundreds" (1949); "Hotel Sahara" (1951), starring Yvonne De Carlo; "Guns at Batasi" (1964), starring Richard Attenborough and Mia Farrow; and "Terror Under the House" (1971), starring Joan Collins.

In 1939 George Hambley Brown married the actress Maureen O'Hara, though the marriage, which was never consummated according to O'Hara due to her parents' intervention, later was annulled. He later met Bettina Kohr, who was Laurence Olivier's press agent. In her later years, Bettina worked as a gossip columnist for an English-language magazine for expatriates in Spain, where she and George lived in retirement.

Brown was a rebellious adolescent. She was expelled from three boarding schools; in her words, she was expelled from one because she "organized protests because we weren't allowed to change our underpants," and another "where I had described (the headmistress's) bosom as an unidentified flying object." [David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace: "The New Book of Lists", p.10. Canongate, 2005. ISBN 1-84195-719-4.]

Brown studied at St Anne's College, Oxford. Before graduating in 1974 she won the 1973 "Sunday Times" Drama Award for her one-act play "Under the Bamboo Tree". A subsequent play, "Happy Yellow", was mounted at a small theatre in London in 1977. She also wrote for "Isis", the university literary magazine, to which she contributed interviews with the columnist Auberon Waugh and the actor Dudley Moore. She ended up dating both men.Fact|date=August 2007 Her relationship with Waugh served as a great boost to her writing career, as he used his influence to get attention drawn to her. At this time in the mid '70s she also dated the writer Martin Amis.

She met Harold Evans in 1974, and began working for his Sunday Times as a writer. Evans divorced his wife in 1978. Evans and Brown were married in East Hampton, New York, at the home of then-Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn on August 20, 1981. Brown lives in New York City with her husband, Sir Harold Evans, and two children, a son, George, born in 1986 and a daughter, Izzy, born in 1990. Both children grew up in New York. George aspires to be a hairdresser and works happily in Cape Cod. Izzy is an aspiring poet and was elected Senior Prefect for her school, St. George's this year.

Journalism career

In 1973 she won the Pakenham Award for the best young journalist. The "Sunday Times" called her the Most Promising Female Journalist, and in March 1974, the British edition of "Cosmopolitan" magazine described her as a "stunning twenty-year-old playwright." In this period, Brown wrote a regular column for "Punch" magazine. She reported from New York for the paper and its colour magazine. In 1978 the magazine gave her the Young Journalist of the Year Award.cite web |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5229/is_2003/ai_n19145215 |title= Tina Brown |work= UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography |date= 2003 |accessdate= 2007-11-26] That same year she quit to join Harold Evans at The Sunday Telegraph in London.

Brown also wrote columns on politics and culture for "The Washington Post" and "The New York Sun" in 2004 and 2005.Fact|date=August 2007 Unfortunately, her Washington Post column was not well received within the newsroom itself.cite web |title= The reinvention of Tina Brown begins to unravel |work=The Daily Telegraph |date= 07/11/2003 |url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/11/07/nmed07.xml]

Editing career

Early years

Brown became editor of "Tatler" in June 1979 at the invitation of its new owner, the Australian millionaire Gary Bogard; in a short time she quadrupled its circulation to 40,000.Fact|date=August 2007 In 1982 S. I. ("Si") Newhouse Jr., owner of Condé Nast Publications, bought the magazine, and in 1983 it was voted England's Magazine of the Year.

After leaving "Tatler" she was hired in May 1983 as an editorial adviser to "Vanity Fair" in New York, initially for six weeks. She stayed on as a contributing editor for a brief time, and then was named editor-in-chief on January 1, 1984. Her restructuring of the magazine debuted with the April 1984 issue, featuring actress Daryl Hannah on the cover. She brought in Dominick Dunne as a writer on crime and Helmut Newton as a daring photographer. The magazine's readership began to grow in 1985, and the magazine eventually became a tremendous success both in circulation and profit.Fact|date=August 2007 She took the sales from around 200,000 to more than a million with a mix of celebrity interviews, serious foreign affairs specials, columnists and photography. She persuaded the novelist William Styron to write about his depression under the title "Darkness Visible", which subsequently became a best-selling nonfiction book.

New Yorker

In 1992, she accepted the company's invitation to become editor of "The New Yorker". She redesigned the magazine and introduced the first staff photographer, Richard Avedon. She brought in many new reporters and critics, including Hendrik Hertzberg, Simon Schama, Jeffrey Toobin, Anthony Lane, Malcolm Gladwell and the man she eventually nominated as her successor, David Remnick, then a reporter with the Washington Post.cite news |url= http://nymag.com/news/features/33159/index1.html |title= What Does Tina Brown Have to Do to Get Some Attention? |first= Vanessa |last= Grigoriadis |work= New York |date= June 18, 2007 |accessdate= 2007-08-13] She also hired Pam McCarthy, who she worked with at "Vanity Fair" and is currently the deputy editor. She retained long-time writers like John Updike, Roger Angell, Brendan Gill, and Philip Hamburger. Over the years she let 79 writers go while recruiting 50 new writers.

Her tenure was controversial: she was accused of being a vulgarian and destroying the New Yorker, while she argued that she cut dead wood and reinvigorated it.Fact|date=August 2007 Over her tenure, circulation increased by 30 percent, adding 250,000 new readers.Fact|date=August 2007 Brown insisted on timeliness from writers, but often allowed writers the freedom to select subjects.cite news |url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,2108188,00.html |title= Princess of parties |first= Emma |last= Brockes |work= The Guardian |date= June 23, 2007 |accessdate= 2007-08-13] Themagazine's Establishment currently looks at her leadership amicably.

In 1998, she resigned from the New Yorker following an invitation from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films (owned by the Disney Company) to be the chairman in a new multi-media company they intended to start with a new magazine, a book company and a television show. The Hearst company came in as partners with Miramax.

Talk Magazine

Tina Brown created Talk magazine, a monthly glossy, and appointed Jonathan Burnham and Susan Mercandetti to manage Talk Books. Both magazine and book company made an immediate impact, the magazine with a circulation around 800,000 and the book company with a number of best sellers (including the memoir of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani). Three years after the launch the magazine was on track to viability, with rising circulation and advertising revenues, but the company was badly damaged in the advertising recession after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center. Publication was suspended soon afterward and Talk Books was absorbed into Miramax.Fact|date=August 2007

Despite the magazine's ability to attract a steady stream of leading stars for its covers, it failed to find its niche, and Brown found that Talk's corporate backers were less patient than the Newhouses (the owners of Conde Nast) when the magazine ran up losses estimated at $55 million (£38 million).cite web |title= The Daily Telegraph |date= January 20, 2002 |url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/20/wtina20.xml |title= Tina Brown: I have no plans to retire and knit |first= Charlotte |last= Edwardes |accessdate= 2007-11-26] Weinstein, to prevent further losses, canceled the venture in January 2002, with Brown receiving a half of her £1.4 million contract.cite web |title= Tina Brown is given £700,000 pay-off |work= The Daily Telegraph |date= July 25, 2002 |url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/07/25/wtina25.xml |first= Simon |last= English |accessdate= 2007-11-26] Brown said that, despite the failure of the magazine, she had no regrets about embarking on the project. "I was at the New Yorker, I had had a wonderful time for nearly seven years and wanted to go and do something on my own, I wanted to try to do that. I would have always regretted it if I hadn't."

Brown's career has excited a great deal of controversy over the years, perhaps because of her self-promotional techniques and strong ambition to succeed in New York, a city famous for its ambiguous attitude to aggressively achieving a successful career (Brown herself famously said on arriving in New York: 'You don't make friends, you make contacts.'). One of her most vociferous critics describes her as 'toxic waste' after this failure of Talk magazine, but Brown responded in an interview: 'It was completely understandable. Talk became this kind of hysterically over-inflated sort of media story. And it was fun for people to write about. I thought that it was a little excessive at times. But I'm kind of used to that at this point.'

Recent work

Tina Brown went on to produce a series of specials for CNBC. The network followed up by signing her to host a weekly talk show of politics and culture titled "Topic [A] With Tina Brown", which debuted on May 4, 2003. The program welcomed guests ranging from political figures, such as Prime Minister Tony Blair and Senator John McCain, to celebrities, such as George Clooney and Annette Bening. The program ended on May 29, 2005, ostensibly because Brown had to dedicate herself to an upcoming book on Diana, Princess of Wales. [cite web | last = Brown | first = Tina | title = Topic A With Tina Brown: All Good Things... | url=http://www.topicawithtinabrown.com/allgood.html | accessdate = 2007-03-29 ] Media observers noted, however, that Brown's program had struggled to maintain an audience for the program, such that steady ratings declines likely played a part in "Topic [A] "'s cancellation. [cite web | last = Higgins | first = John M. | title = Broadcasting & Cable Breaking News: Brown Bags CNBC Show | url=http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA600035.html?display=Breaking+News | accessdate = 2007-03-29]

A senior editor at the Times has also commented on her writing abilities as a columnist:

"The Diana Chronicles"

On June 12, 2007, Brown published "The Diana Chronicles", a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. During the Summer 2007, "The Diana Chronicles" was consistently at the top of the "New York Times" bestseller list for hardback nonfiction, with two weeks in the number one position. [cite news
title=Hardcover Nonfiction
date=2007-07-29
accessdate=2007-07-27
work=New York Times
url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/bestseller/0729besthardnonfiction.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1185553544-WO4LrlwAn+bKiJvt7w5SQA] Brown's critics recognized the successful choice of subject and expected "The Diana Chronicles" to sell well, in part because of Tina's connection to Diana.cite news |title= The return of the media queen |work= The Observer |date= May 27, 2007 |url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/may/27/pressandpublishing.theobserver |first= James |last= Robinson |accessdate= 2007-11-26]

"The Daily Beast"

In April 2008, it was reported that Brown had teamed up with InterActive Corp's Barry Diller to create a news aggregator [ [http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/barry_diller_tina_brown_team_on_news_aggregator Barry Diller, Tina Brown Team On News Aggregator ] ] . This project became The Daily Beast [ [http://www.thedailybeast.com The Daily Beast] ] , which launched on October 6, 2008. Mixing original journalism, celebrity gossip, and high-class photography with a blog-like sensibility, Daily Beast targets such competition as the Huffington Post.

According to Brown, "I want this to be a speedy read that captures the zeitgeist. We'll be smart and opinionated, looking to help cut through the volume with a keen sensibility. We're aiming for a curious, upscale and global audience who love politics, news and the media world." [ [http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2008-10-05-tina-brown-website_N.htm Tina Brown jumps off page and onto the Web] , USA Today 10/6/2008 ]

Publications

*cite book
first=Tina
last=Brown
title=Loose Talk: Adventures on the Street of Shame
date=1979
publisher=Joseph
location=London
isbn=0718118332
*cite book
first=Tina
last=Brown
title=Life As a Party
date=1983
location=London
publisher=A. Deutsch
isbn=0233976000
*cite book
first=Tina
last=Brown
title=The Diana Chronicles
date=2007
location=New York
publisher=Doubleday
isbn=0385517084

Bibliography

*cite book
first=Judy
last=Bachrach
title=Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power
date=2001
location=New York
publisher=Free Press
isbn=0684837633

References

External links

* [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=59916&view=full_sptlght Official Random House biography]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/browntina/ washingtonpost.com: Tina Brown] , archived columns of Brown's from "The Washington Post"
* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tina-brown/ HuffPo: Tina Brown] , archived columns of Brown's from "The Huffington Post"