Tina Brown – the ex-queen of the newsstands – is back, this time on the Web.
Her new venture, Daily Beast, which sees itself as a must-read for hipsters in news, politics and pop culture, is set to debut today.
The site, backed by media mogul Barry Diller’s IAC, is a soft launch, meaning it will be accessible to viewers but won’t have advertisers as it tries to build audience.
Many of those hip users could be excused for wondering what the excitement is all about. Brown was last in the public eye six years ago, when the much-ballyhooed Talk magazine closed, but not before it blew through $54 million in only 2 1/2 years. Before that, she was editrix of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
The Internet news business is proving to be a mixed bag. Gawker Media on Friday said it was firing 19 people due to the slowing economy, while The Drudge Report racked up a 14 percent gain in unique viewers to 1,901 in August, according to an industry report.