Welcome back to the Deep Dive, the show that
takes a stack of sources, articles, bios, you
name it, and really just gets to the heart of
what you need to know. And today our mission
is all about media transformation. We're diving
into the career of one of the most influential
journalists out there, Christina Hambly Brown,
Lady Evans. But everyone just knows her as Tina
Brown. Exactly. And we're not just, you know,
reading her resume. We're trying to figure out
the blueprint. How? How did she manage to take
these classic, sometimes really stagnant media
brands and just completely revitalize them? She's
the ultimate transformation. artist, isn't she?
I mean, think about the scale here. She takes
a stuffy British Society magazine, Tatler, the
fading American glossy Vanity Fair, and then
the big one, the super entrenched literary institution,
The New Yorker. And turns them into cultural
behemoths. She was a master at mixing high and
low culture. Right. And you can see the proof
of that success in the awards, not just the flashy
covers. Oh, absolutely. It goes way beyond just
circulation numbers. Under Tina Brown, her publications
picked up, what, 10 national magazine awards?
Ten. And four George Polk awards, five overseas
press club awards. It's a level of success you
just... You rarely see. Which is why, of course,
she was inducted into the Magazine Editors Hall
of Fame in 2007. It was inevitable. And it's
important to see her as this transatlantic figure.
She's both British and American, a journalist,
editor, author. Broadcaster, too. And in 2000,
she was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II.
Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
For services to journalism overseas, it feels
like her whole career was built on this idea
that smart content doesn't have to be, you know.
boring and that popular culture doesn't have
to be dumb but what's really striking when you
look at all the sources is that this editorial
dna this ability to find a great story and add
some wit that wasn't something she learned on
the job no it was there from the very beginning
it was forged in her youth okay so let's start
there the foundations of this subversive editor
we need to go back to her childhood in england
uh maidenhead and little marlo Her upbringing
is just fascinating. It really sets the stage.
It was completely steeped in storytelling, in
visual drama. Her father, George Hambly Brown,
who was a film producer, right? A pretty significant
one. He produced those beloved Miss Marple detective
films, the ones with Margaret Rutherford. So
you have this mix of high -quality production
and, you know, popular entertainment. And her
mother was in that world, too, Bettina Core.
She was an executive assistant to Laurence Olivier.
on his Shakespeare films. Right. And her older
brother also went into film production. So Tina
Brown grew up surrounded by the mechanics of
how stories are made, how drama is constructed,
the power of a great image. It wasn't just a
literary house then. It was a house focused on
performance, on delivery. That's the key. She
understood from day one that media, whether it's
film or print, it requires a bit of spectacle,
a compelling script. But she wasn't just watching
the drama unfold. She was creating it. Very early
on. The sources describe her as, and this is
a quote, an extremely subversive influence as
a child. How subversive are we talking? Expelled
from three boarding schools subversive. Three.
That's not just, you know, bad behavior. That's
a pattern. That's institutional revolt. And that's
the blueprint, isn't it? The willingness to challenge
the establishment, and not just quietly, to do
it with flair, with style, in a way that gets
attention. Okay, give me an example. She organized
a protest, a full -on demonstration. Against
what? Against the school's policy of only allowing
three changes of underwear a week. You're kidding!
I'm not. It's this perfect, tangible example
of her questioning authority over something that's
just ridiculous. It's dissent as public action.
And her wit was already there, too. The literary
subversion. Absolutely weaponized. The most famous
story, of course, is from her journal. She described
her headmistress's bosoms as unidentified flying
objects. Oh, that's brilliant. That is exactly
the kind of smart, accessible humor she'd later
put on magazine covers. It's high -quality shade.
Right. I mean, you don't just get expelled for
being naughty. You get expelled for being a spectacular
writer. That ability to turn rebellion into a
memorable phrase, that had to be the biggest
sign of what was to come. And there was one more
incident, wasn't there? Something about a play.
Yes. And this one is maybe the most telling.
Drawing on that film background, she wrote a
play about her school being blown up. Blown up
and replaced with what? A public lavatory. A
literary bomb threat. I love it. It's a metaphor
for her entire career. Don't just critique the
institution, dramatically obliterate it and replace
it with something useful. Maybe a little shocking.
for the masses a public lavatory is democratic
it's necessary it's the perfect symbol her subversion
wasn't just for kicks it was about injecting
some life some frankness into these stagnant
places and yet she channeled all that rebellious
energy into getting into oxford at just 17 st
anne's college and got a ba in english literature
but even as an undergraduate she was already
honing her craft she was writing for isis the
university's literary magazine and landing big
interviews She was getting major names before
she even had a degree. She just had that professional
instinct from the start. She was also writing
for the New Statesman. The editor saw this irreverent
piece she wrote about getting invited to a lunch
at Private Eye magazine and just... offered her
a column. So she was already generating buzz
just by writing about her own life. And winning
awards for it. While at Oxford, she won the Sunday
Times National Student Drama Award for a one
-act play she wrote, Under the Bamboo Tree. And
it was actually performed, right, at the Bush
Theater and the Edinburgh Festival. It was. And
she had another play staged a few years later.
You have to keep coming back to this theatrical
foundation. She understood performance. A magazine
is a performance. The cover is a stage. So after
Oxford, she launches her professional career
in London, a weekly column for Punch. Freelancing
for the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph. And
her work was so good, so sharp, that she won
the Katherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist
under 25. So by her mid -20s, she's already an
award -winning playwright, an established columnist,
a recognized journalist. The stage was set for
her first big transformation job. And that takes
us to the glamour game, The Resurrection of Tatler
in 1979. So she gets this offer from the new
owner, Gary Bogard, to come edit Tatler. And
at the time, what was it? It was basically a
fossil, an old, fusty society magazine clinging
to the past. Her job was to perform CPR. And
her strategy was brilliant. She didn't throw
out the society stuff. No, she just changed the
packaging. She turned it into what she called
a successful modern glossy. And she did it by
blending the high and the low. Right. She brought
in her literary circle. Julian Barnes, Martin
Amis, Dennis Potter, the art critic Brian Sewell.
Real intellectual heavyweights. It was that synergy.
Use the highbrow writers to elevate. the society
gossip and use the society gossip to give the
serious writers a huge new audience and visually
she went straight to the top the biggest names
in photography norman parkinson helmet newton
david bailey She knew that a modern, glossy,
needed world -class visuals. But she also got
her own hands dirty. She wrote these sharp, satirical
profiles of eligible London bachelors. Under
a pen name, right? Rosie Boot? That's the one.
It was perfect. She was covering the aristocracy,
but she was also mocking them from the inside,
which is always the most fun. It felt like insider
gossip, not some dusty old report. And then,
just through pure timing, she hits the cultural
jackpot. Lady Diana Spencer. Suddenly. Tatler
is at the absolute epicenter of this global fairy
tale that was about to define the entire decade.
And by covering Diana's rise, Tatler became essential
reading. Brown became such an authority that
she was doing commentary on the 1981 royal wedding
for NBC's Today Show. Incredible. So what did
all this do for the numbers? The numbers are
just staggering. In three years, circulation
didn't just go up. It quadrupled from 10 ,000
to 40 ,000. An explosive success for a magazine
everyone thought was dead. So successful that
in 1980... the legendary condo nast owner, Samuel
Irving Newhouse Jr., he just bought Tattler outright.
And Brown's success did not go unnoticed. Newhouse
had his eye on her. Which is how, in 1983, she
ends up in New York advising on a struggling
magazine called Vanity Fair. They had just resurrected
it, but it wasn't working. It was floundering.
So by January 1st, 1984, she's officially the
new editor -in -chief. And she inherits a magazine
with a circulation of just 200 ,000. Her diagnosis
was famously brutal. She said it was pretentious,
humorless, just dull. Exactly. Her mission was
to inject it with life, with drama, with an edge,
to make it a magazine he had to read. So she
starts hiring writers who can deliver that drama.
Her first contract writer was Dominic Dunn. And
this is where you see her genius for finding
a story. Dunn told her he was going to California
for the trial of the man who murdered his daughter.
And she told him to keep a diary. Right, as a
way to process it. That diary became the article
Justice. a father's account of the trial of his
daughter's killer. It was a cultural phenomenon.
And it launched Dunn's entire magazine career.
But that's, I mean, that's pure Tina Brown, isn't
it? It's both genius and, you could argue, ruthlessly
efficient. She saw the narrative potential in
his personal trauma and turned it into unmissable
content. She built a whole roster of writers
like that. Gail Sheehy, Marie Brenner. She mixed
serious reporting with celebrity glamour. a perfect
example is william styron she convinced the novelist
to write about his clinical depression which
became the article darkness visible and then
a best -selling book she was giving real intellectual
weight to these personal stories she was but
let's talk about the visuals The shockwaves.
Her relationships with photographers like Annie
Leibovitz and Helmut Newton were game -changing.
These weren't just photos. They were events.
And if you have to pick one image that defines
that whole era of Vanity Fair, it has to be the
August 1991 cover. Oh, the Demi Moore cover.
Naked and pregnant. It was a cultural detonation.
It was provocative. It was intimate. It was something
no one had ever seen on a mainstream magazine
cover before. It became a front -page story.
everywhere. It created buzz, controversy, and
it sold magazines like crazy. It proved her theory
that a cover could be a piece of performance
art. But she'd been building to that for years,
right? In 1985, the magazine was struggling and
there were rumors it was going to be folded.
Right. She needed to create buzz fast. So she
used three huge stories that year. First, a Harry
Benson cover of Ronald and Nancy Reagan dancing.
It made them seem human. Then, a Helmut Newton
portrait of the accused murderer, Claus von Bulow,
in his leathers with his mistress. That's sex,
crime, high society, all in one package. And
finally, she went back to her roots. She wrote
her own cover story on Princess Diana, The Mouse
That Roared. She knew Diana was the center of
the celebrity universe. So let's get to the bottom
line. What did all this do for sales? They skyrocketed.
From that initial $200 ,000 to $1 .2 million.
Advertising pages soared. Single copy sales revenue
hit $20 million. Okay, that single copy number
is huge. She had a 55 % sell -through rate at
the newsstand. Which is insane. The industry
average was, what, 42 %? It means people weren't
just subscribing. They were rushing out to buy
the issue because she had created an event. But
there was some debate about whether it was actually
profitable, right? Some, like Professor Jeffrey
Pfeffer, suggested it was losing money. There
was that scrutiny, yeah. But the Condé Nast president
at the time, Bernard Lizard, he completely refuted
that. He said the claim was absolutely false
and that Vanity Fair made a very healthy profit.
So was it making money or was it just creating
so much cultural capital for Condé Nast that
Newhouse didn't care? Probably a bit of both.
The buzz and the awards were priceless for the
brand. But those commercial numbers, they speak
for themselves. The transformation was commercially
viable. She won four national magazine awards
there. It was a critical and a commercial success.
And the proof of that success was the next job
they gave her. In 1992, they asked her to take
on the impossible, modernizing the New Yorker.
Which was a whole different challenge, a huge
intellectual test. She became only the fourth
editor in its 73 -year history and the first
woman. She was walking into a literary monastery.
And her initial approach was smart. She didn't
try to make it Vanity Fair 2 .0. She went back
to the old issues from the founding editor, Harold
Ross. Right. She said she wanted to bring back
his original irreverence, a lightness of touch.
She reassured everyone that The New Worker would
remain a text -driven magazine. But the old guard,
they were not buying it. They were terrified.
Oh, they were horrified. They'd seen the Demi
Moore cover. They expected a celebrity takeover.
The backlash was immediate and very, very public.
This is where you get those amazing quotes. George
Trow accused her of kissing the ass of celebrity.
And her reported response was just classic Tina
Brown. I am distraught at your defection, but
since you never actually write anything, I should
say I'm notionally distraught. Ouch. And Jamaica
Kincaid called her Stalin in high heels. Garrison
Keillor quit the day she was hired. She wasn't
just changing a magazine. She was desecrating
a sacred institution in their eyes. Their response
was furious. But she had Newhouse's backing,
and she just powered through it. She kept some
of the old guard, like John Updike and Roger
Angel, but she cleaned house. She did. She let
79 staffers go and hired 50 new people who shared
her vision. And the people she brought in became
the future of American journalism. This is when
she hires David Remnick. David Remnick, who she
later nominated as her successor, Malcolm Gladwell,
Jane Mayer, Jeffrey Toobin. She was building
an intellectual dream team. And while she kept
the long -form text, she blew up the visual identity.
She appointed Richard Avedon as the magazine's
first -ever staff photographer. That was a lightning
strike. The New Yorker had never taken photography
seriously. Hiring Avedon, a huge celebrity photographer,
was a visual announcement that the magazine was
now part of the global cultural conversation.
And the covers became topical, controversial.
Echoes of her school days, right. That Edward
Sorrell cover in 1992 of a punk rocker in a horse
-drawn carriage. It was her winking at her critics.
Yes, I'm bringing in the punk rock, but don't
worry, the carriage is still elegant. And then
a year later, the Art Spiegelman cover for Valentine's
Day. A Jewish man and a black woman kissing.
It was a direct comment on racial tensions in
Crown Heights. She was using the cover as political
commentary. She also broadened the content, right?
She did that whole issue on black in America
with Henry Louis Gates. Unprecedented for the
magazine. So after all that chaos and all those
changes, what were the results? The numbers,
again, tell the story. Newsstand sales went up
145 percent. Circulation climbed to over 800
,000. But the old guard still said it was losing
money. And that's where Newhouse's perspective
is so important. He said he viewed it as a startup.
He said, she did what we would have done if we
invented the New Yorker from scratch. To do all
that was costly. We knew it would be. It was
an investment in relevance. And the losses were
steadily decreasing under her. From $17 million
in 1995 down to $11 million by 1997, she was
turning the ship around. And winning awards left
and right. 10 national magazine awards, including
its first ever for general excellence. Michael
Kinsley called her the best magazine editor alive.
She managed to expand the circulation, cut the
losses and win more awards than her predecessors.
It was an astonishing achievement. But the story
doesn't end there. In 1998, she leaves the New
Yorker for this massive, ambitious and ultimately
doomed. venture talk media a huge joint venture
with miramax films so harvey and bob weinstein
and ron galati the idea was to create this fully
integrated media company books a magazine movies
tv shows the centerpiece was talk magazine Launched
in 1999. And the launch party itself was pure
Tina Brown spectacle. It was. It was supposed
to be at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but Mayor Giuliani
stopped it. So she moved it to Liberty Island.
800 guests, including Madonna and Selman Rushdie,
arriving by barge, eating under thousands of
Japanese lanterns. It was a statement. The content
was designed to make waves, too. The very first
issue had that explosive interview with Hillary
Clinton. Where she linked Bill Clinton's philandering
to his childhood abuse. Right. And it had serious
literary pieces, too. But critics felt it was
sometimes a bit too cozy with Miramax stars like
Gwyneth Paltrow. But what people forget is how
serious some of its reporting was. Talk published
one of the first major U .S. profiles of Osama
bin Laden. That was before 9 -11. They were on
top of major global stories. But it wasn't enough.
Despite a decent circulation of around 670 ,000,
the magazine folded in January 2002. The timing
was just brutal. The advertising recession after
9 -11 was devastating for the industry, especially
for a new high -cost venture like talk. And Brown
was very honest about it. She called it her first
very public failure. But she framed it well.
She said, no big career doesn't have one flame
out in it, and there's nobody more boring than
the undefeated. Right. And it's really important
to separate the magazine from the book division.
Talk Miramax books. Oh, that was a huge success.
Out of 42 books they published, 11 became New
York Times bestsellers, books by Rudy Giuliani
and Madeleine Albright. So even within that public
failure, there was this quiet, undeniable success.
After Talk folded, she did a brief stint in television.
Yeah, she hosted a weekly show on CNBC called
Topic A with Tina Brown. From 2003 to 2005, it
struggled to find an audience. Averaged about
75 ,000 viewers. So she resigned from that to
write her Diana biography. Which brings us to
her next big pivot, into the digital world with
The Daily Beast. In 2008, she teams up with Barry
Diller to launch this online news site. A totally
different animal. Fast -paced. online, needing
constant traction. But it got popular very quickly.
They had these high impact exclusives like Christopher
Buckley's column endorsing Obama. They were making
news. And they won Webby Awards for Best News
Site in 2012 and 2013. So she proved she could
adapt her buzz making skills to digital. But
then came the merger. In 2010, the Daily Beast
merges with Newsweek. And Brown is put in charge
of the whole thing. tasked with reviving this
dying print giant with her digital startup. And
it was just an impossible challenge. The print
collapse was accelerating so fast. By December
2012, Newsweek published its final print issue.
And that digital -only version didn't even last.
They brought the print edition back after she
left, which just shows how tough that market
was. Even she couldn't beat the economics of
2012 publishing. And there was some controversy
there, too. An issue with some false reporting
about a kidnapped Canadian journalist, Amanda
Lindhout. It led to a retraction from NPR. So
in 2013, she leaves. But Barry Diller's statement
at the time was really important. He defended
her tenure. He made a crucial distinction. He
said, if you take away the failed experiment
to revive Newsweek, the story of the Daily Beast
itself is one of excellence. So the takeaway
is, she could launch a successful digital brand
from scratch. But saving a stinking print institution,
that was a bridge too far for anyone. Precisely.
And while all this was going on, she was building
two other huge pillars of her career. Her work
as a royal biographer and as a pioneer of live
journalism. Let's talk about the books. The Diana
Chronicles in 2007 was a monster hit. A massive
success. Topped the New York Times bestseller
list. She followed it up in 2022 with The Palace
Papers. Another bestseller. She really established
herself as the go -to chronicler of the modern
monarchy. But the reviews were always polarized,
which is so typical of her work. The Wall Street
Journal called her the ideal tour guide. But
others found the mix of serious reporting and
gossip a bit much. The Spectator said some of
the gossip was grossly implausible. It's the
same tension. Using the sensationalism to get
a mass audience for the sharp reporting. It defined
her magazines and it defines her books. And then
there's Women in the World, which she started
in 2010. She called it a live journalism platform.
Which was a genuinely innovative idea, taking
stories off the page and putting them on a stage,
amplifying the voices of global women on the
front lines. And the scale was huge. These summits
were at Lincoln Center. incredible lineup of
speakers. Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep, Oprah
Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Nobel laureates. Queen
Rania of Jordan. It gave the platform immense
credibility. And they took it global. Sao Paulo,
London, New Delhi. It proved there was a huge
appetite for serious, inspiring journalism as
long as it was packaged with the right star power.
It really showcased her commitment to serious,
impactful journalism, which sometimes gets lost
in all the talk about celebrity covers. Finally,
just to round out her career, we have to mention
the honors and her personal life, the CBE in
2000. She's still a commentator for major royal
events like the Queen's funeral. And of course,
her late... husband, Sir Harold Evans, the legendary
editor of The Sunday Times. She now hosts the
annual investigative journalism summit in his
name, which features people like Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein. It keeps her firmly connected
to that world of high level, rigorous journalism.
And she recently wrote about her son, Georgie,
who is on the spectrum and still lives with her,
which really humanizes this. larger than life
figure. It does. Her whole career is just this
incredible case study in audacity and brand resuscitation.
She was never afraid to take on the biggest,
hardest jobs. So if you had to boil down her
methodology, her core characteristic, what is
it? It's her ability to use high stakes, personality
driven stories, Diana, Demi Moore, a controversial
cover to draw attention and, crucially, to fund
high quality, intellectually demanding writing.
She built a commercial engine for serious journalism.
So what does her story teach us about media today?
It teaches us about the cost and the sheer audacity
it takes to revolutionize these legacy brands.
She navigated that brutal transition from print
to digital, and her career shows that relevance
isn't just about quality. It's about constant,
sometimes painful reinvention. The moment you
get comfortable, you start to die. She definitely
never got comfortable. Let's leave our listeners
with a final thought then, something that goes
all the way back to her beginnings. Think about
the irony. This is the young rebel who wrote
a play about blowing up her... school. And replacing
it with a public lavatory. Yes. And she becomes
this establishment figure, honored by the queen,
the world's most famous chronicler of the monarchy.
She used her subversive talent to get inside
the elite, and then she told the most commercially
successful, analytically sharp stories about
their lives. That's the ultimate transformation.
Proving the greatest distance in media is sometimes
between the critic and the chronicle. Absolutely.
The deep dive is a shortcut to being well -informed.
And today, we are definitely well -informed on
the dramatic career Tina Brown. We'll see you
next time.