The Daily Beast: Tina Brown Launches Much-Awaited News Site

The struggling US magazine industry is losing one of its biggest cheerleaders to the web as Tina Brown trades the glossy pages and lengthy essays of her past career for the hyperlinks and blog entries of a new site called The Daily Beast.

The former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and the short-lived Talk launched a trial version of the site, funded by Barry Diller's IAC new media empire on Monday.

Named after a fictional Fleet Street newspaper in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, the site is pitched as both a home to original commentary and a "curator" of other sites' highlights, putting it in competition with an ever-growing list of bloggers and news aggregators.

According to Ms Brown, however, her site has appeal because of the very fact that the market is so crowded.

"What's been lacking for the overwhelmed but smart reader is an intelligent guide," she said in an interview. "The time is right to do a site which cuts through the noise and cuts through the clutter."

Rather than worthy "eat your peas news", The Daily Beast will offer political, cultural and celebrity coverage with "a unique editorial sensibility", she said.

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