Mainstream Media Finally Pay Attention To The Daily Beast

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By Matt Haber

October 27, 2008 | 8:02 a.m.

Tina Brown at the re-launch of <i>Radar</i> in 2005<br /> (Getty Images)

Tina Brown at the re-launch of Radar in 2005

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Sure, it's well past its buzzy first 100 hours, but that doesn't mean there can't be more coverage of Tina Brown and Barry Diller's three-week-old don't- call-it-a-news-aggregator site, The Daily Beast.

In today's New York Times, Tim Arango offers a dual (duel?) profile of Ms. Brown and her aggregating sister-in-arms, Arianna Huffington. (And yesterday's Times Magazine featured an interview with Christopher Buckley by Deborah Solomon, but that was simply to fill a quota since, it had been nearly a week since Mr. Buckley was written about in The Caucus, the 'Style' section, Week in Review or Op-Ed.)

On Sunday, CBS News Sunday Morning offered a glimpse inside the inner-workings of The Daily Beast, which seems to consist mostly of Ms. Brown looming over young employees' computers and pointing at their monitors.

Correspondent Erin Moriarty got Ms. Brown to hold forth on her very personal approach to media. Here's what she said about the late Princess DIana:

'I always felt a great link to Princess Diana,' Brown says. 'Because she rose to fame at the same time that I was a 25-year-old editor of TatlerTatler Magazine. And so in a way, 's fortunes rose as Diana's fortunes rose.'

And here's how she came up with the idea to have Annie Liebovitz photograph Demi Moore nude for the cover of Vanity Fair for August 1991:

'At the time I was pregnant. So I was very much feeling that I wanted to showcase women who, proudly were pregnant.'

If you're concerned that The Daily Beast is also all about Ms. Brown, don't be. "I've been through a bad experience and it has strengthened me," Ms. Brown told Ms. Moriarty.

"And it means that, with this new website, I have not been nearly as anxious as I was when I went to do Talk. Because at that point, I hadn't had a failure. When you don't care as much, somehow it gives you a kind of inner strength."