An Interview With Tina Brown

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L.G.: When did he pull the trigger?

T.B.: He pulled the trigger in January, and I then had to kind of totally get them to begin to put together a structure, and I hired Ed Felsenthal from the Wall Street Journal who was terrific.

L.G.: He was from Condé Nast Portfolio at that point.

T.B.: He had been at Portfolio, Edward Felsenthal. Don't call him Ed, he doesn't like being called Ed. He came aboard, I thought he was a terrific choice, he's just been absolutely wonderful. And then I had to find a G.M., and look, and I really knew that I wanted to have a business partner who was tremendously sort of tactile about editorial, who understands editorial. I didn't want to have somebody who kind of spoke geek speak at me and didn't understand the intense interface that I wanted with editorial and building a site. And we found Caroline Marks at Comcast, who was running a social-media aspect of Comcast, and I just liked her immediately. I thought she's very dynamic, and she's spirited and smart. She came on in June. Ed came in March, April. And now we have about 12 staffers on editorial and about eight on [Web technology].

L.G.: And these people don't work cheap, do they?

T.B.: Well, some of them do. [Laughs] I think every site has to have the right combination between the grownups and what we call the gremlins. I've got a whole bunch of very young kids here, a couple of interns from The Colbert Report, two or three who are right out of college, another two terrific young sort of web editors—one from Us.com, one from Nerve.com and ABC.com. And then we've also got what I call the kind of more mainstream media editors: Jane Spencer from the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Wapshott from the New York Sun, and Bryan Curtis is from Slate.

L.G.: Obviously, for some of these people, these are real jobs and serious commitments on their part. You have the good luck to be working in a situation where this was Barry's idea, so he's invested in it from the get-go, psychically and emotionally. But what sort of commitment has he made?

T.B.: I feel well protected, and I feel that the site will have his full commitment, and everything about the way it's going, I think, is very encouraging to him. After two weeks I think we're all very encouraged at the response to it. Barry's a big believer in having faith and strong nerves as long as the numbers are going up.

L.G.: I see. And what sort of a commitment, just monetarily? I've seen $18 million.

T.B.: I don't want to [discuss that]. That's an excess. Websites are not as expensive to launch as magazines. There's a real sense in this company [IAC] of trying things. Barry stayed with a lot of the things that he's launched quite a long time, and quite frankly, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as far as I'm concerned. This is very much an exuberant editorial project for me. I've got to have a book as well—the Clintons are my next book—and I have that coming in 2009, and I've also got a production development deal with HBO. This is one of the things that I'm doing, but of course I'm getting my whole sort of gusto right now. We'll see what happens.

L.G.: You say that the Clinton book is due in 2009?

T.B.: Yes.

L.G.: Yikes, Tina, you have a lot on your plate.

T.B.: 2010, I'm sorry. Thank you. Otherwise, I'd be having my brains blown out.

L.G.: But, even so—

T.B.: Listen, it's a lot, but you know what, Lloyd? My children have grown up, it's astonishing what kind of energy you unleash when your kids have finally left the house.

L.G.: Describe to me what the business plan is.

T.B.: I don't want to go into a long-term business plan. We're still really in formation with our business plan. This has been very much a "beta" (in the dry-run, testing stage). We're seeing what it needs. What I love about Barry is he's basically saying let's blue sky something; see what it needs, what it requires, see what kind of investment and development we need. He's very much in listening mode, in evolutionary mode, with this project right now.

L.G.: But, as you know, every print publication with extensive internet operations has been scratching their heads trying to figure out how to monetize this.

T.B.: I know, but then you have to have some patience, and some vision. One of the reasons I wanted to be in this with Barry Diller is because he does, as he showed with the Fox Television Network [which Diller built from the bottom up]. He believes in this project, and he believes in this world. And he was very smart to get into it when he did. And there's no question in everybody's minds where it's all going. I must say, from my point of view, even if there was a transitional period when advertising is divided between mainstream media and new media, and a sense that clearly people are not sure how to monetize these things, there's no doubt in anybody's minds that online is the great growth advertising venue of the future. It may take some time to transition it, but you have to take the plunge at the right moment or you're left behind. So, from my point of view, what really excites me is that I've spent so much time in mainstream media, and just in the last seven, eight years, frankly, you get so tired of the sort of constant hammering. There's such a depression in the mainstream-media world, whether it's publishing or network television or magazines, and everybody's kind of glum, and feeling they're kind of being outpaced. It's all about budget cuts. From my point of view and our point of view here, it's exciting to be in a situation where you feel the only way to go is up, that it's about finding an audience fast, and catering to that audience fast. I love being able to adapt. Obviously the site will perform and do well in the areas where the readers and users tug us, you know? And I like being able to do that, because it means you can adapt very quickly and become commercial very quickly because you can get a sense of response.

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