Beware The Beast

Posted by Helena Humphrey on October 16, 2009 at 4:04 PM
tina brown daily beast .jpg
When ex Vanity Fair and New Yorker Editor, Tina Brown, turned her back on print to launch The Daily Beast website, many were left open mouthed. Brown had enjoyed a highly successful career and was at the top of her game - so why the decision to leave a world she knew so well for a foray into the unfamiliar territory of cyberspace? And more importantly, would she be able to pull it off? 

One year down the line, and Brown's blog, offering curated news aggregation plus reporting and opinion, is enjoying significant success - currently boasting a top 10 spot on Technorati's ranking of influential blogs, ahead of celebrity gossip site TMZ.com and Andrew Sullivan's well-established politics blog, The Daily Dish, according to the Financial Times. Last month the site attracted its highest monthly audience yet, ringing in with a respectable 3.9m unique visitors total. 

Whilst the site still has a way to go if it wants to reach the dizzy HuffPost heights, an aim Brown has set in her ambitious sights to fulfil by the 2012 American elections, it is well on the way. Although Brown admits that adapting to the fast-pace of publishing online was initially a challenge, she insists this has not hindered the site's progress and that the team of writers is ever growing. Sub sites such as Sexy Beast, Art Beast, Book Beast and Hungry Beast have already been launched before the main site has even had chance to break even.  
Brown is by no means dismissing the power of the printed word - but feels there is little future for pieces of any great length in magazines, stating: "Books are the new magazines", justified by her opinion that: "People's time spans are so short, they either want a short 'nerve centre' piece immediately, or they want a short book they can read on a plane".

That's why in her latest venture, Brown's got her team of writers churning out books of no more than 50,000 words through a tie-up with Perseus Books: In January, "Attack of the Wingnuts" by John Avlon will be available to buy as an e-book on Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader. Short titles that have sold well through this method will then be printed as paperbacks.

Concrete information concerning the revenue the project has so far generated is thin on the ground. According to The Daily Beast's general manager, Caroline Marks, this is ensure that new start ups such as The Daily Beast have "room to build their audiences before foisting break-even on them" in these unfavourable economic conditions. 

With an almost infinite amount of advertising available online, rates are not what they used to be. One of The Daily Beast's original aims was to establish a higher quality of advertising in order to justify its premium prices. The website, which Brown has dubbed "the smart person's news site", approached high-end brands with the promise of tailored packages capable of reaching a well-heeled and educated audience - and so far has done deals with Paramount Pictures, Bottega Veneta and British Airways. 

Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, is described by Brown as being "a big believer" in online advertising, and is pleased with the progress the website has made up 'til now:  "It's so much more than I thought it would be at this early stage in terms of audience, and in terms of establishing itself as this thing, this Beast" - yet recognises there is still work to be done "At some point, advertising is going to evolve from banners and 200 x 300 boxes that aren't particularly compelling."

Without doubt, the blogosphere can be a fickle environment at the best of times - and The Beast's continued success can never be guaranteed. Diller is adamant that he has not put "a judgment-day date" on when IAC will make a decision as to whether The Daily Beast can pay its way, stating: "We'll all know it when we know it." 

As to the significant dent news blogs of this kind can have on the newspaper industry's revenue, Brown is quick to counter - believing that the industries problems are attributable to "corporate greed" as well as competition from the internet - and warns that in the current economic climate job cuts may be doing more harm than good: "These big companies are cutting editorial costs to get greater returns. The product becomes an empty shell and readers drift away."

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