Tina Brown Buries the Lede

Tina Brown Buries the Lede

Tina Brown Buries the Lede

A mostly political weblog.
April 28 2009 3:14 PM

Tina Brown Buries the Lede

Elizabeth Spiers on

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, and its editor:

 I thought the first issue was appallingly bad but sort of expected that someone there would realize that and make some changes.

That said, I didn't expect that person to be Joanne Lipmann.  Conde Nast HR called me after I resigned from mediabistro and asked if I wanted to come in and talk about the new biz mag they were starting.  (Or as it amusingly was put to me: "Don't you think it's about time you came in here?" Apparently one's failure to ever apply for a job at Conde Nast is automatically an egregious oversight.)  ...I was already planning to launch [web site] Dealbreaker at that point, and I told them point blank that I had something in the works and even told Lipmann what it was.  She replied that she "didn't really get the web." ...

Anyway, The details are not particularly interesting, but that's the only interview I've walked out of in ten years thinking, I could never, ever work for this person.

Another writer I respect had a similar reaction to Lipmann. ... Meanwhile, Tina Brown follows conventional etiquette and is  as nice as possible to Lipmann . But she's more critical of Conde Nast king Si Newhouse (the man who picked her):

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[T]here has been a lurching inconsistency to the way he closed down clever, promising Domino (and then, I am told, experienced regret when he read its glowing obituaries) and cut back Portfolio's excellent Web site while vowing to keep the magazine alive-only to close it anyway.

Brown also buries the lede in her last sentence, hinting at the possible closure of ... The New Yorker . ... But what would she know about The New Yorker ? ...

P.S.: Meanwhile, everybody's being very nice to David Bradley , the last benign sucker willing to lose millions overpaying journalists for the right to distribute their prose on glossy paper. ...

P.P.S.: Somewhere, Jim Impoco is smiling . ... 12:24 P.M.

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