Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The most controversial editor in the history of American magazines slams her critics, defends her business acumen and says Talk will probably be her last magazine.
Dec 2, 1999 | Certainly Tina Brown has seen better days. Talk has been slammed since it launched last August. Key editors have jumped ship. After four issues, critics have called the magazine everything from a bust to a bore. A piece in Monday's New York Times accused Brown of shilling for Talk's corporate owners, Miramax Films, and its parent company, Disney, and pointedly wondered whether Tina Brown was actually in control of her magazine.
Preposterous, ludicrous, Brown said of the Times piece and its question. Cool and congenial in her nearly bare, 56th-floor Manhattan office, Brown seemed animated by the bad press and, in fact, looked sleepier when conversation turned elsewhere. She hailed Martha Stewart, apparently because the Living editor, too, has taken a great beating in the press, and lived to tell the tale.
Are you having fun?
Yes, I am.
You can't be happy with the press Talk has gotten. You're good at turning magazines around. What do you have in mind for Talk?
I did expect this. In June, actually, I called my staff around for lunch and I said to them, we've all had a great time together for the last eight months, but you're about to enter a tunnel. When you come out the other end, everyone is going to be slinging mud. I hope you are going to be tough enough for it. I hope you can withstand it. Some of you won't be here at the end of it.
It's true. It has gone down exactly as I expected. I guess with one difference: The incredible success of the first issue and the launch and the strength of the business side, which has remained incredibly strong throughout and continues to build which tells me that the criticism in time will turn around. Just as it always has in my career. I have always operated in a sea of controversy. I have not taken over magazines and had instant acclaim for doing what I have done.
The first year and a half at Vanity Fair nobody liked what I was doing. I got nothing but abuse for it. In fact, I was constantly in the middle of articles about the closing of the magazine and the fact that it was a major disaster.
At the New Yorker it really never ceased, the constant baying of the dogs. So I am used to that.
I think that what I've learned -- after being in the middle of controversy for 20 years -- is that the dogs bark and the caravan moves on.
Of all the criticism leveled against Talk, has any rung true?
It washes over you, quite frankly. I don't read a great deal of it because there's so much of it. I just check out the angle. If it's the same angle I've seen before I don't bother to continue.
Ultimately, I know what I'm doing. We're evolving a magazine gradually. I never said it would come out of the box perfectly. It is a work in progress. It's a show that's getting done. You retool and you evolve, you change and you shape; you bring on elements and you throw out elements and some elements don't work. Something you totally believed in doesn't seem to work, so you do something else. That's what the process is. Nothing is given birth to without that.
What have you believed in that hasn't worked?
It's too early to talk about. It's too early to say what has or hasn't worked. With a monthly, you are always operating in a strangely dissonant universe because you are way ahead of your critics. The critics start to stumble on things they don't like -- you've already seen that that's not quite right. You're already ahead. In some ways, it's encouraging because you know what you think, most of time. I certainly feel that I know what's wrong ...
What is wrong?
I think we were understaffed at the beginning. We really went into a major launch with a very small and quite young staff -- all of whom have been fantastic -- but we needed some more seasoned and additional people to get things done.
Anything you'd like to say about staff defections?
There were some people who weren't going to make the cut, quite honestly. You have to have courage, commitment and character to do a launch. It's hard. If you ask anyone who's launched -- Entertainment Weekly or any of Jann Wenner's magazines -- if you talk to Jann Wenner about launching, it's a war. A launch is a war. You're in a very competitive environment and no one is going to give you any breaks. Why should they?
You have to get it right in the full glare of attention. It's very, very hard. Some people find it too hard. Out of a staff of 50, four people have left. That's OK. It's fine. It was hard work. Some people don't like hard work. Some people are too inexperienced to handle it. Some people are out of their depth.
Would you say that about [Talk's second-in-command, vice president and executive editor] David Kuhn?
No, I wouldn't say that about David. Some people left. It's OK. There's no bad feeling between me and any of the people who left.
[After our conversation, Tina Brown phoned to say she'd like to add the following to her remarks about Talk staff members who left the magazine]
The editors who left had all worked incredibly hard under a lot of pressure because our staff was so small. They contributed an enormous amount to the magazine's launch. I appreciate the efforts they made on the ground floor and I understand if they didn't want to sign up for the long haul. Over the course of a year, private lives and priorities can change and a shake-out is inevitable. I think David Kuhn will be great at Brill's online venture. He has the right energy and enterprise for a start-up, as I discovered. I am glad [managing editor] Howard Lalli got the top job in Atlanta. He deserved the promotion, and I think the change of lifestyle will be terrific for him.
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