Tina Brown Exits The Daily Beast

Uber editor Tina Brown is exiting Barry Diller’s The Daily Beast, the online magazine she helped create with the IAC/InterActiveCorp founder, when her current contract expires in January, she recently told staffers.

 Brown, synonymous with editorial expose, cutting edge, and pushing the cover boundaries, reinvented herself as a leader in the Online News space, when she launched The Daily Beast, in 2008, five years ago with IAC and former Paramount Studios Chief, Barry Diller.

Brown was told of the decision over the summer, according to published sources, after profits from The Daily Beast plummeted and the merger with Newsweek resulted in a disastrous turn of events including the transition of the oldest weekly print magazine to online only.

The Daily Beast, one of the original online news magazines, in what has become a very crowded space, rose to the top led by Brown and her reputation for taking the trivial, spinning it into a lead story.  The Beast combined aggregated news as well as original writing giving the audience the opportunity to read  tantalizing tidbits from a smorgasbord of online offerings and also see news coverage from publications not normally read.

Brown resurrected her signature style of maintaining a commitment to long form magazine journalism, celebrity sensationalism, and pop culture gossip as well as in-depth news analysis and coverage.

Brown‘s next venture, “Tina Brown Live Media,” already in the works will focus on Theatrical Journalism. Her severance package has not been announced although speculation is that she will gain some of the spin offs of The Daily Beast including the Women in the World Summit/Conference which honors and hosts extraordinary women from around the world.

The expectations are high for the women who put a very pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair wearing nothing except a very large diamond.

Brown manned the helm of Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair for eight years from 1984 to 1992. She authored several books including The Diana Chronicles, a biography on the late Princess Diana and is a frequent contributor for all things Royal.