In a move that was surprising for its lack of surprise, Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown will leave the money-losing website at the end of the year.
The move ends a five-year relationship between Brown, 59, and Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns the Daily Beast.
Diller had decided not to renew Brown’s $1 million-a-year contract, which expires Dec. 31, sources said.
Brown, one of the best-known magazine editors in the country, whose stints atop Vanity Fair and The New Yorker produced lots of buzz — not to mention red ink — said Wednesday she is starting Tina Brown Live Media, which will continue to produce the Women in the World Summit she has produced for four years for the Daily Beast. The summit, held at Lincoln Center for the past two years and co-hosted by Diller’s wife Diane Von Furstenberg and actress Meryl Streep has attracted an A-List of names from the political, business and entertainment worlds.
In the past few weeks, isolated whispers about Diller’s growing restlessness over the Daily Beast and his willingness to sell the five-year-old property had grown into a steady buzz.
IAC denied Brown’s baby was for sale. It is expected to lose about $20 million this year, sources said.
Still, while Brown’s exit was not a shock, it did set tongues and Twitter streams into motion.
In one popular photo tweet, Brown is seen sitting alone and working the phones at a table in The Park in Chelsea, not far from the IAC offices on 18th St. and the Hudson River.
Only the night before she had been at the Toronto International Film Festival hosting a dinner at the Four Seasons, toasting another one-time wealthy patron, filmmaker Harvey Weinstein.
Ever the dealmaker, Brown had invited several Hollywood types, including Pierce Brosnan, Adrien Brody and Daniel Bruhl to mingle with high-ranking banking execs from Credit Suisse, which was a co-sponsor of the dinner.
Weinstein had teamed with Hearst in 1999 to back Brown’s Talk magazine, which was a commercial failure. Weinstein pulled out of the venture after Hearst, in 2002, decided not to fund the joint venture any more.
Diller and Brown were once among the closest of media friends.
After Talk folded — having racked up losses of $80 million — Diller offered Brown, her husband, Harry Evans, and their two children his yacht, the 305-foot schooner EOS, in the Mediterranean Sea for their mid-winter vacation.
And when Brown’s peers inducted her into the Magazine Hall of Fame in 2007, she picked industry outsider Diller to do the induction speech.
When the dynamic duo launched Daily Beast in 2008, many saw it as Tina’s effort to emulate Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post, which would be sold to AOL for $315 million.
Five years later, that success has eluded Diller and Brown.
Her exit casts doubt on the future of the Daily Beast as well as her future relationship with Diller.
Brown has always been adept at attracting wealthy backers, starting in the early 1980s when Condé Nast boss S.I. Newhouse Jr. recruited her from Tattler in her native UK to save Vanity Fair — and later the New Yorker.
Even as she prepares to exit publishing, leaving more than $100 million in losses over five years in her wake, Brown said that the Daily Beast will be a media partner for her Summit’s next big event — slated for April 2014 — provided it survives, of course.
The imminent split was first reported by BuzzFeed.