An Interview With Tina Brown

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L.G.: Have you started selling advertising?

T.B.: No, we haven't even gone to advertisers yet. This is a beta period. It means we've not really fully launched. We came out before the site was 100-percent baked as we might have done. I mean, we might've put in several more verticals and all the rest of it, but we decided not to wait for that, because we felt that this news moment was so good and such a great way to build audience in this news market, that it was better to get it out now and find our audience and gradually evolve as we went along. We'll start going into advertisers in early 2009. It was Barry's idea. Barry said to me, "Don't think about advertising until you've been through this period, because you're going to want to retool things, think about it, and then you'll be able to know where you're going and what your story is."

L.G.: Obviously there's been a great deal of buzz, but the traffic is understandably low. You just started, after all.

T.B.: But, hey, buzz equals traffic, as you well know, Lloyd.

L.G.: It's a steep upward curve since the start?

T.B.: We're very encouraged—very. We've been up for 10 days. So don't push us too hard, because I don't even know. Things at the beginning can say one thing—who knows? Talking about numbers, we don't know, we have no idea.

L.G.: You've been up for 10 days, but since you're Tina Brown, you've been getting a lot of attention for it.

T.B.: I'm completely worn out. It's like, "What are your metrics?" I'm thinking, If I had a minute to bloody check them, I could tell you.

L.G.: This, for you, is like a soft launch, isn't it. Maybe you can have a party in, like, a puddle somewhere, on a little traffic island, maybe.
 
T.B: Oh, I don't know, yeah, traffic island—that's a good idea.

L.G.: I was amused: In your own interview with yourself, you asked yourself whether you could bankrupt Barry Diller. And you said, "Even I can't burn through money that fast."

T.B.: It's true.
 
L.G.: Well that's very reassuring. You've had a number of good hits, as with our friend Christopher Buckley [whose endorsement of Barack Obama and subsequent resignation from National Review, the conservative magazine founded by his late father William F. Buckley Jr., received widespread coverage in the mainstream media].
 
T.B.: Yeah, that was like Christmas Day. Chris and I are really good friends. We agreed he was going to do a regular column a few months ago, and he said "I'm all yours once the Beast begins to roar." So up he goes with his first column, and it's great, and then I say, "Hey, what's the next column, Chris?" He says "I think I've got something that you're going to enjoy," and I said "Okay, great, we'll put it up on Monday." He said, "I have a funny feeling you might want to put it up right away," so of course as soon as it came in, we rammed it right in. Then the next thing is, he does the other one about the fact that he gets fired, and then of course it goes crazy. It's just been amazing. It's been a huge traffic driver. It's been picked up everywhere. Everywhere. It's amazing how it continues. It's one of the great fun things about the traffic metrics to be able to see. It's still driving. We published the piece whenever it was, and now I can see people are going back to the new piece about having left the National Review, but they're also then going to the other piece to see what he said in the first place. So it's been great for us.
 
L.G.: Have there been other things that have driven traffic to the Daily Beast?
 
T.B.: We've had a lot of good stuff, actually. Mike Kinsley's piece about McCain at the craps table got a huge amount of traffic.
 
L.G.: That was the one where McCain chewed out the old lady?
 
T.B.: Yep, that was great. We had a terrific Kevin Sessums' Jennifer Lopez piece that drove a lot of traffic. We had a wonderful piece where one of our interns got McCain's auntie on the telephone, [laughs] and she gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Beast about what she feels are the chances of her nephew—and that's been picked up everywhere today. I think frankly we're a very lively staff. As long as the ideas keep rolling, obviously people are interested in content, so it's the content that's driving the site, which is very nice for us. I think news is the best marketing budget. I mean, I'd rather have news than a marketing budget. If you have stories people want to read, that's the best way to market your site. It's much better than pictures, posters, and expensive advertising.

L.G.: Do you have a marketing budget?
 
T.B.: Not really, no.
 
L.G.: I think Tina Brown is the best marketing budget.
 
T.B.: God, I want to go to bed, Lloyd. I was up at 4 a.m. blogging [about the final presidential candidates' debate].
 
L.G.: I read that. That  was very amusing.

T.B.: Thank you. I used to take two days to write a column for the Washington Post. Now I'm writing one in two-and-a-half hours. You're used to it. You've always been a kind of content monster, churning it out like a maniac.

L.G.: Okay, the flattery portion of the interview is over.
 

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