January 30, 2008

Tina Brown enters mag editors hall of fame

Noted British journalist Tina Brown today adds a new feather to her cap today as she is inducted into the American Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in New York.

It is the latest in a series of awards Brown has received since she started in magazine journalism in 1978 at the age of 25 when she was appointed editor of Tatler.

After making her mark at Tatler (she was credited with rejuvenating the magazine and almost tripling its circulation) she moved to the US as editor of Vanity Fair. During her eight years there, she became one of the most visible and talked about editors in the country. As a result she was asked to try and revive the flagging New Yorker magazine. By introducing photography and shortening the articles she boosted its circulation – but it still lost money.

Then, with the financial backing of two noted Hollywood producers, the Weinstein brothers, she launched Talk magazine. It made a journalistic impact but also lost money – a victim it was said of the aftermath of the World Trade Centre attack and the drop-off in American advertising. It closed in 2001.

Since then she has written a column for The Washington Post , hosted a tv talk-show and started a new writing career as an author. Her first book was about Princess Di, which came out last year, and her next project is a book about the Clintons, due out in 2010

“The Eighties and Nineties were the glory era for magazines,” she said this week. ‘Now it is not so easy. It is definitely harder for magazine editors now, with the intensity of the internet”. She will be best remembered, according to Janice Min, editor of US, for such bold moves as putting a nude, pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, and having Roseanne Barr guest-edit The New Yorker.

She is, of course, also noted for her marriage to Sir Harry Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times, now an “editor at large” for The Week magazine. They have two children and for several years have lived in a maisonette in Manhattan – where tonight they will be dusting off shelf space for the crystal bowl memento of her new honour.