Punch After graduating from Oxford, Brown was invited to write a weekly column for the literary humor magazine
Punch. These articles and her freelance contributions to
The Sunday Times and
The Sunday Telegraph earned her the Catherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist under 25. Some of the writings from this era formed part of her first collection
Loose Talk, published by Michael Joseph.
Tatler In 1979, Brown was invited to edit
Tatler by its new owner, the Australian real estate millionaire Gary Bogard. During her tenure, she turned the society magazine into a successful modern glossy magazine with covers by celebrated photographers
Norman Parkinson,
Helmut Newton, and
David Bailey, and fashion by
Michael Roberts.
Tatler featured writers from Brown's circle, including
Julian Barnes,
Dennis Potter,
Auberon Waugh,
Brian Sewell,
Martin Amis,
Georgina Howell (whom Brown appointed deputy editor), and
Nicholas Coleridge. She transformed the social coverage with pictures by her young discovery Dafydd Jones. Brown wrote content for every issue, contributing sharp surveys of the upper classes. She traveled through Scotland for a feature titled "North of the Border with the Thane of Cawdor" and wrote short satirical profiles of eligible London bachelors under the pen name Rosie Boot.
Tatler covered the emergence of
Lady Diana Spencer, soon to become
Princess of Wales. Brown joined NBC's
Tom Brokaw in running commentary for
The Today Show on
the royal wedding on 29 July 1981. ''Tatler's
circulation increased from 10,000 to 40,000. She also hosted several 1982 episodes of the long-running BBC1 film review television series Film ...'' as a guest presenter.
Vanity Fair In 1983, Newhouse brought Brown to New York to advise on
Vanity Fair, a magazine he had resurrected earlier that year, with a circulation of 200,000. She served as a contributing editor for a brief time, and was named editor-in-chief on 1 January 1984. Upon taking over the magazine, she found it to be "pretentious, humourless. It wasn't too clever, it was just dull." The first contract writer she hired was movie producer
Dominick Dunne, who she met at a dinner party hosted by the writer
Marie Brenner. Dunne told Brown he was going to California for the trial of his daughter's murderer. Brown suggested he keep a diary as solace, and his resulting report (headlined "Justice: A Father's Account of the Trial of his Daughter's Killer") proved the launch of Dunne's long-running magazine career. Early pieces such as Dunne's cover story on accused murderer Claus von Bülow and Los Angeles arrivistes such as
Candy Spelling, as well as the use of provocative covers, transformed the prospects of the magazine. Among others, Brown signed up
Marie Brenner,
Gail Sheehy—who wrote a series of widely read political profiles, including a cover story on
Mikhail Gorbachev—Jesse Kornbluth,
T.D. Allman, Stephen Schiff,
Lynn Hirschberg, Peter J. Boyer, John Richardson,
James Atlas,
Alex Shoumatoff and
Ben Brantley. The magazine became a mix of celebrity news and serious foreign and domestic reporting. Brown persuaded novelist
William Styron to write about his depression under the title
Darkness Visible, which subsequently became a best-selling non-fiction book. At the same time, Brown formed fruitful relationships with photographers
Annie Leibovitz,
Harry Benson,
Herb Ritts, and
Helmut Newton. Leibovitz's portrayals of
Jerry Hall,
Diane Keaton,
Whoopi Goldberg and others came to define
Vanity Fair. Its best-known cover of this period featured a naked and pregnant
Demi Moore in August 1991. Three stories from June to November 1985 helped the magazine gain attention and circulation in a year when rumours were rife that it was to be folded into
The New Yorker. Harry Benson's cover shoot of
Ronald and
Nancy Reagan dancing in the White House; Helmut Newton's portrait of accused murderer
Claus von Bülow in his leathers with his mistress Andrea Reynolds with reporting by
Dominick Dunne, and Brown's own cover story on Diana, Princess of Wales in November 1985 titled "The Mouse That Roared". Sales of
Vanity Fair rose from 200,000 to 1.2 million. In 1988, Brown was named Magazine Editor of the Year by
Advertising Age magazine. Advertising topped 1,440 pages in 1991 and circulation revenues rose, especially from profitable single-copy sales at
US$20 million, selling some 55 percent of copies on the newsstand, well above the industry average sell-through rate of 42 percent. Despite this success, professor
Jeffrey Pfeffer in his book ''Power: Why Some People Have It – And Others Don't
suggested that the magazine was losing money. In a letter to the editor of the Evening Standard'', Bernard Leser, president of
Condé Nast USA, stated Pfeffer's claim was "absolutely false" and affirmed that
Vanity Fair had indeed earned "a very healthy profit." Leo Scullin, an independent magazine consultant, called it a "successful launch of a franchise."
The New Yorker In 1992, Brown accepted the company's invitation to become editor of
The New Yorker, the fourth editor in its 73year history, following
Harold Ross,
William Shawn, and
Robert Gottlieb. Brown was the first woman to hold the position. Before taking over, she immersed herself in vintage
New Yorkers, reading the issues produced by founding editor Ross: "There was an irreverence, a lightness of touch as well as a literary voice that had been obscured in later years when the magazine became more celebrated and stuffy. ... Rekindling that DNA became my passion." "
The New Yorker is a text-driven magazine and always will be, and certainly will be under my tenure," she said. Text, she added, was her "first love." Anxieties that Brown might change the identity of
The New Yorker as a cultural institution prompted a number of resignations.
George Trow, who had been with the magazine for almost three decades, accused Brown of "kissing the ass of celebrity" in his resignation letter. (To which Brown reportedly replied, "I am distraught at your defection but since you never actually write anything I should say I am notionally distraught.") The departing
Jamaica Kincaid described Brown as "
Stalin in high heels." Brown, however, had the support of
New Yorker stalwarts
John Updike,
Roger Angell,
Brendan Gill,
Lillian Ross,
Calvin Tomkins,
Janet Malcolm,
Harold Brodkey and Philip Hamburger, as well as newer staffers
Adam Gopnik and Nancy Franklin. During her editorship, she let 79 staffers go and engaged 50 new writers and editors, including
David Remnick (whom she nominated as her successor),
Malcolm Gladwell,
Anthony Lane,
Jane Mayer,
Jeffrey Toobin,
Hendrik Hertzberg,
Hilton Als,
Ken Auletta,
Simon Schama,
Lawrence Wright,
John Lahr, Pamela McCarthy, and executive editor Dorothy Wickenden. Brown introduced the annual fiction issue and the holiday cartoon issue. She also collaborated with Harvard professor
Henry Louis Gates to devote an issue to the theme Black in America. Brown broke the magazine's longstanding reluctance to treat photography seriously in 1992, when she invited
Richard Avedon to be its first staff photographer. She approved controversial covers, including
Edward Sorel's October 1992 image of a punk-rock passenger sprawled in the back seat of an elegant horse-drawn carriage, which may have been Brown's self-mocking riposte to fears that she would downgrade the magazine. A year later Valentine's Day publication of
Art Spiegelman's cover of a Jewish man and a Black woman in an embracing kiss, a comment on the mounting racial tensions between Blacks and ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, garnered controversy. Brown appointed Spiegelman's wife
Françoise Mouly as the magazine's art editor. During Brown's tenure, the magazine received four George Polk Awards, five Overseas Press Club Awards, and ten National Magazine Awards, including a 1995 award for General Excellence, the first in the magazine's history. Newsstand sales rose 145 percent.
The New Yorkers circulation increased to 807,935 for the second half of 1997, up from 658,916 during the corresponding period in 1992. Critics maintained it was hemorrhaging money, but Newhouse remained supportive, viewing the magazine under Brown as a start-up: "It was practically a new magazine. She added topicality, photography, color. 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." Writer Adam Gopnik said, "The magazine will remain smarter and braver—more open to argument, and incomparably less timid—for her presence here." Writer
Michael Kinsley wrote, "She is the best magazine editor alive. What more can I say?" Writer
Stanley Crouch said, "The most important thing, I think, has been [Brown's] effort to bring together the intellectual material and the streets. When she was in charge, despite all the complaints from the old
New Yorker crowd, one got a much stronger sense of the variousness of American society than one did under the editorship of perhaps the rightfully sainted Mr. Shawn." Brown worked with the book division's editor in chief Jonathan Burnham and acquiring editor Susan Mercandetti. She recalled in November 2017 at the time of allegations of sexual assault being made against Harvey Weinstein: "Strange contracts pre-dating us would suddenly surface, book deals with no deadline attached authored by attractive or nearly famous women." Staff members included editors
Sam Sifton, Danielle Mattoon,
Jonathan Mahler and
Virginia Heffernan.
Jake Tapper and
Tucker Carlson provided political columns. Notable articles included the first US profile of
Osama bin Laden before
9/11,
Tom Stoppard's autobiographical piece about his
Jewish roots that was the origin of his 2020 play
Leopoldstadt and
Tucker Carlson's revealing profile of then Republican presidential candidate
George W. Bush. An anticipated magazine launch party at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City was thwarted by mayor
Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly felt it was not an appropriate use of the site. The event was moved to
Liberty Island, where on 2 August 1999, more than 800 political leaders, writers, and Hollywood notables, including
Madonna,
Salman Rushdie,
Demi Moore, and
George Plimpton, arrived by barge for a picnic dinner at the feet of the
Statue of Liberty under thousands of Japanese lanterns and a
Grucci fireworks display. An interview with
Hillary Clinton in the first issue claimed that the abuse her husband suffered as a child led to his adult philandering.
The Washington Post reported that at times, "
Talk seemed more interested in promoting such Miramax stars as
Gwyneth Paltrow than in politics." Despite having achieved a circulation of 670,000
Talk magazine's publication was halted in January 2002 in the wake of the advertising recession following the
9/11 attacks.
Politico estimated that Brown had "bombed through some $50million in 2 years" on the failed venture, an assessment that did not include revenue from the book division. Talk Miramax Books flourished as a boutique publishing house until it was detached from Miramax in 2005 and folded into Hyperion at Disney. Out of 42 books published during Brown's time, 11 appeared on
The New York Times Best Seller list, including
Leadership by Giuliani,
Leap of Faith by
Queen Noor of Jordan,
Stolen Lives by
Malika Oufkir,
Experience by
Martin Amis and
Madam Secretary by
Madeleine Albright. A $1million contract settlement in 2002 ended Brown's involvement in Talk Media.
Topic A After Brown hosted a series of specials for
CNBC, the network signed her to host a weekly Sunday evening talk show of politics and culture titled
Topic A with Tina Brown, which debuted on May 4, 2003. Guests included politicians
Tony Blair and
Senator John McCain and celebrities such as
George Clooney and
Annette Bening.
Topic A struggled to find an audience on Sunday nights. It averaged 75,000 viewers in 2005, about the same as
The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (79,000) and John McEnroe's
McEnroe (75,000.) made
The New York Times Best Seller list for hardback nonfiction, with two weeks in the number one position. In 2017, Brown published
The Vanity Fair Diaries, culled from her eight and a half years as editor in chief of
Vanity Fair. In 2022, Brown published a sequel to
The Diana Chronicles called
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—The Truth and the Turmoil, on the period between the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth II. It topped
The New York Times best seller list and sold 250,000 copies in the US. "[Brown] becomes the ideal tour guide," reviewed The Wall Street Journal: "witty, opinionated and adept at moving us smoothly from bedchamber to below stairs while offering side trips to the cesspits of the tabloid press, the striving world of second-tier celebrities and the threadbare lodgings of palace supernumeraries."
Philip Hensher wrote in a review for
The Spectator, "Some of the gossip, all books of this sort, is grossly implausible."
The Daily Beast On 6 November 2008, Brown teamed up with
Barry Diller to launch
The Daily Beast, an online news site. The site gained popularity after
Christopher Buckley, posted a column announcing his support of
Barack Obama. Other news-making pieces included
Lucinda Franks's coverage of the
Bernie Madoff scandal. Regular contributors to
The Daily Beast have included
John Avlon, former CIA analyst
Bruce Riedel, former
Council on Foreign Relations president emeritus
Leslie Gelb, and journalist
Michelle Goldberg.
The Daily Beast won the
Webby Award for Best News Site in 2012 and 2013. On 12 November 2010,
The Daily Beast and
Newsweek announced they would merge operations in a joint venture to be owned equally by
Sidney Harman and
IAC/InterActiveCorp called the Newsweek Daily Beast Company, with Brown as editor in chief and Stephen Colvin as CEO. In December 2012, the then final printed issue of
Newsweek was published. A cover headline stated the magazine would change to a digital format, alongside an editorial written by Brown. The digital format was short-lived: the print edition returned after Brown's departure. In September 2013, while with
The Daily Beast, Brown was accused of falsely printing stories about
Amanda Lindhout, a kidnapped Canadian journalist who was abused for 15 months by her insurgent Islamist kidnappers in
Somalia, including an incorrect story about an alleged Lindhout pregnancy that never took place. A resulting retraction was printed by
National Public Radio in response to Brown's comments. On 11 September 2013, Brown announced her departure. Initial reports of her contract not being renewed The Women in the World summits ended during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Truth Tellers In 2023, in partnership with
Reuters and
Durham University, Brown hosted Truth Tellers, the first annual Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism, at the
Royal Institute of British Architects, in honor of her late husband
Sir Harold Evans, the former editor of
The Sunday Times. The summit was attended by over 400 investigative journalists and editors from the UK, the US, Ukraine, Mexico, Russia, Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, Iran, Bulgaria and France. Among the guests were
Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein in conversation with
Emily Maitlis about What Makes a Great Investigative Journalist, activist
Bill Browder,
Bellingcat investigator
Christo Grozev, Head of Investigations and Chairwoman of the Board for the Anti-Corruption Foundation (founded by
Alexei Navalny)
Maria Pevchikh, Russian journalist and writer
Mikhail Zygar on the weaponization of media in Russia, and the creator and writer of HBO show
Succession Jesse Armstrong. ==Personal life==