Tina Brown: My life in media

Tina Brown, 53, began her editing career at the age of 25 at Tatler before crossing the Atlantic to edit Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She took Vanity Fair's sales from 200,000 to over a million in eight years and spent six years at The New Yorker, controversially hiring and firing writers and redesigning the magazine into the format it remains close to today. She left to start the now defunct celebrity magazine Talk. She married Sir Harold Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times, in 1981. They have both taken US citizenship and live in New York with their two children. Brown has spent the last two years writing an unauthorised biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, The Diana Chronicles, which was published last month.

What inspired you to embark on a career in the media?

I was a newspaper and magazine junkie from the year dot. My father was a film producer and I have always loved the narrative drive of the great non-fiction stories. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood made me see what a great literary journalist could do with the facts.

When you were 15, which newspaper did your family get, and did you read it?

We took The Times and the big, glamorous Daily Express, with its sparkling William Hickey column as it seemed in those far off days. I became a Daily Mail junkie when David English took over and took it tabloid. But the publication that interested me most was Anthony Howard's New Statesman. When I first got a piece published there I felt I'd won an Oscar.

What were your favourite TV and radio programmes?

Compact, the BBC TV soap about magazines. Then there was Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation, which was a revelation to me and made me want to go to Oxford. I was an addict of The Goon Show and Round the Horne on the radio.

Describe your job.

I became an editor at 25 when I took over the Tatler. I discovered that editing was similar to producing, which was second nature to me from watching my father. I fell in love with the collaboration of magazines and the sheer mad race to the close which I adore to this day. Recently I have been a full-time author and love the return to writing.

What's the first media you turn to in the mornings?

I turn first to the New York Post, which is the Murdoch rag that everyone reads first whatever they might pretend. Then to The New York Times, fantastic on foreign coverage and opinion. The Wall Street Journal third, unrivalled for its reporting. I've become a fan of The New York Sun, a small paper with a highbrow arts section. My fave blogs are Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.com), or Jim Romenesko's media site (poynter.org), or thesmokinggun.com for gloriously embarrassing leaked documents.

Do you consult any media sources during the working day?

I can't resist checking out drudgereport.com and often the political website Huffington Post.

What is the best thing about your job?

The sheer portability of writing. It is a delight after 22 years of executive life. I wrote Diana at our house in Long Island with Harry typing next door. We had a ball, stopping for lunch and conferring on what each had written.

And the worst?

I miss responding to a news story with a narrative piece that digs deeper than anything currently out there.

How do you feel you influence the media?

At The New Yorker and Vanity Fair we constantly set the agenda for TV discussion and editorials. It was great to see how you could help to move the media in a new direction. At Vanity Fair I was proud of publishing William Styron's piece about his manic depression. He turned it into a bestseller with the same title as the piece, Darkness Visible.

What is the proudest achievement in your working life?

Waking up the sleeping beauty of The New Yorker magazine. It was a very difficult challenge to modernise the grand old lady of American letters.

And what is your most embarrassing moment?

Sitting next to the historian and journalist Theodore White when I first came to the US and asking him what he did for a living.

At home, what do you tune into?

CNN News, HBO. I am an addict of 24. I've no idea how to replace The Sopranos.

What are your weekend papers? And do you have a favourite magazine?

I read all the weekend papers when I come here. My favourite magazines are still The New Yorker and The Spectator, which I subscribe to in the US. I still enjoy Vanity Fair, love Foreign Affairs in the US and The Week in both places.

Name the one career ambition you want to realise before you retire.

It was always my ambition to edit a newspaper but I think I may have missed the boat as newspapers in the US are slowly fading into the sunset. I dream they will have a glorious heyday again before they go.

If you didn't work in the media what would you do?

Run a theatre.

Who in the media do you most admire and why?

I very much admire Andrew Neil's column in The Business and his TV show This Week is whip-smart too. Geoffrey Robertson, the brave defender of speech. Simon Jenkins for his range and versatility. Alan Rusbridger for his brilliant visual sense. Robert Harris, such a superb columnist. Paul Dacre, the Mail still has such dynamism and flair.

The CV

1974: Graduates from Oxford University and begins working on The Sunday Times where she meets Harold Evans; leaves shortly afterwards to work on Punch

1981: Marries Harry in the Hamptons

1979 Appointed editor of Tatler

1983: Hired as an editorial adviser to Vanity Fair and becomes editor the following year

1992: Becomes editor of The New Yorker

1998: Lured by Harvey and Bob Weinstein to set up Talk magazine with Miramax's backing

2003: Begins hosting weekly political talk show for CNBC, which runs for two years with guests including Tony Blair and George Clooney; writes columns for The Washington Post and The New York Sun

2005: Starts work on The Diana Chronicles, published last month by Random House, £18.99

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