A day after shocking the media business by hiring of Howard Kurtz away from the Washington Post, Tina Brown celebrated the Daily Beast’s two-year anniversary with — what else? — an interview with herself.
Interspersed among her State of the Beast thoughts about what the site has become (“a romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health”) was Brown’s first public admission that talks between Barry Diller and new Newsweek owner Sidney Harman about a possible partnership — as TheWrap has reported — are real, and ongoing:
We hear something is going on with Newsweek.
How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.
Kurtz, for his part, claims he knows nothing about the “Newsbeast” talks, and the potential merger had nothing to do with his decision to take the job as Brown’s Washington bureau chief.
According to the Times, Brown “has gone as far as submitting a memorandum to Mr. Harman outlining how she would run Newsweek, but Mr. Harman was also interviewing other people for the job.”
