Tina's big idea

The media world was rocked this year when Tina Brown stepped down as editor of

The New Yorker. But why edit a mere magazine when you could make movies and

millions too? In a rare interview, she outlines her plans for multimedia domination

There isn't much time, we'll have to work fast. You see, this short newspaper piece could become a 10,000-word magazine article which could in turn make a book; a TV spin-off; a blockbuster movie. Are you ready? It could be big. Here it is.

Attractive English girl comes down from Oxford writing articles faster than people can read them; racy, witty, rude ("Janet Street-Porter dresses like a traffic light and talks like a Tannoy" gives you the idea). Goes through cafe society like a lawnmower, wins Young Journalist of the Year, is given decrepit society magazine to run, and recklessly turns it into the Tatler. Makes a daring transition to New York to be given decrepit literary magazine, Vanity Fair: reinventing celebrity journalism, she turns it into the hottest mag in America.

Then the East-Coast brahmins reel when she is given the rusting flagship of American journalism, The New Yorker. In five years, she has repaired, repainted, remodelled and revitalised it, increasing its circulation by 270,000. Then, as one of the most respected editors in America (her resignation from The New Yorker made the front of the New York Times - above the fold), she does the unthinkable, the indescribable - she quits to go and work for Disney.

At least, she goes to work for Miramax, which is owned by Disney. That is, she goes into partnership with the Weinstein brothers (who produced Pulp Fiction and so forth), and is given an equity position - an equity position! - in her own multimedia start-up company called Talk Media (which is a magazine from which articles can extend into books, TV specials, movies) with an investment of (I'm guessing) $30 million.

Would that work? Could that narrative make a big article, a book, or a film? Can we construe the Tina Brown story as a guide to the zeitgeist of the last three decades? How this tough, talented, and determined person bent three big brandnames to her will without even disturbing her hairstyle?

No, it is interesting. There's a star, a theme and a story. And its rhythm enjoys a natural crescendo, beginning with a 10,000-circulation Tatler and finishing with an 800,000-circulation The New Yorker. The climax is original, too. Equity in a new media company - it's rare for creative people to get equity, especially for journalists. If the project works, Tina will be a multi-millionairess. She will be a producer, a power-broker, and a player.

But first, let's start with the sour grapes. Editors of successful, high-circulation magazines don't usually quit (and previous editors of The New Yorker never willingly quit). So there is quite a widely-held view in the British media that assumes Tina Brown was pushed from The New Yorker. Why else would she jump ship from America's No 1 weekly to go and work for the Weinstein brothers - "the gangsters", as Melvyn Bragg quakingly described them; the Pulp Fiction people. Harvey Weinstein is reputed to have locked a film producer in his hotel room for eight hours until he signed an important contract.

So, over breakfast in Manhattan, I ask Tina about it. But she actually doesn't understand the question, or any variations of it. Pushed? Eased out? Paid off? She looks at me as though I must know something she's forgotten. Why would people be saying "pushed"? What does it mean?

No. At the time, she had on the table a new, five-year contract from Conde Nast's feudal overlord, the billionaire Si Newhouse, at a significantly increased salary. (Taking soundings round the New York media world, you conclude that Tina was heading towards $2 million a year). Added to that, she had the staff she wanted and a rising circulation.

Of course, it was true that the title wasn't making money. In America, though, editors are rigorously excluded from the business end of the company. Tina increased the circulation by a third in five years - an enormous achievement - but there was a failure to sell advertising, and that was a matter exclusively for the magazine's publisher. To sell New Yorker advertising requires a world-class publisher.

Ron Galotti is such a world-class publisher - and this is an opportune moment to mention that Ron Galotti was the publisher of Vanity Fair while Tina was editor. Between them, they brought the publication into profit in their last year. Galotti resigned as publisher of Vogue the same day Tina left The New Yorker, and for the same reason - to be a joint partner in Talk Media.

There was something else, though, that contributed to Tina's success at The New Yorker, and that is a surprising sense of caution, prudence, and carefully-considered action. For instance, while she let go of a total of 79 of the New Yorker's 120 editorial talent, she made very few of these changes in her first year. "I did take the time to figure out who was good," she says. "And because it's such an upsetting business, letting people go [as they call it]. I took a lot of care."

Of the problems of working for Si Newhouse, and the failures of The New Yorker's business- side, Tina has nothing to say. "Conde Nast was a terrific place to work and I wouldn't have changed a bar of it," she says crisply.

No, the record shows that far from being pushed, Tina didn't even jump. Instead, she stepped onto a nicely fitted-out vessel she had carefully constructed to start this new venture; this new magazine; this new type of magazine.

"Talk," she says, "is a cultural search engine." That is, a magazine which publishes narratives, columns, profiles, features which may be developed further into other genres: books, films, and TV shows. At the last count, there have been 18 movie projects that have originated from Vanity Fair and New Yorker articles.

"At the moment, someone writes a magazine article and uses that as a proposal for a publisher to get a book commission, and the movie rights are sold without any benefit to the original magazine publishers. The Talk Media-concept has all those necessary resources round the same table - the director of publishing [Jonathan Burnham], the director of television production [Gabe Doppelt]. And, of course, there's Harvey and Bob for the movies."

Why the name Talk Media? "It's everything people talk about. It's subtitled: `The American Conversation'. The time has come for a big American mag. When you look back at McCall's, in its heyday they were publishing Sylvia Plath.

There was a time when you could get high quality writing to a wide audience. I think that the time is right for that again."

Talk Media will be a big, monthly consumer magazine, with a planned launch of 100,000 subscriptions, and which will sit on the newsstands alongside Vanity Fair, initially selling 500,000 copies. It's ambitious, and it represents a whole new dimension for Tina. To have equity in a magazine selling half a million copies a month is a new order of operation. "I've always been interested in producing," she says. "Maybe it's because editors have a producer gene, this desire to make things happen. But I decided I shouldn't give up my expertise in print. Harvey [Weinstein] offered me everything - print, TV,

movies, books, equity and, at the core, a magazine protected my 20-year knowledge base."

And Tina's expertise will be the source of the synergy that already exists between the different types of media, but all structured in one organisation. It's never worked before, but if anyone can do it, it's Brown and Galotti. They have an unusual track record. Brown is three-for-three so far (Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker). And in an industry where the scrapyards are full of relaunched magazines that didn't float, this achievement is unequalled.

And how about the Weinsteins? Tina says: "The atmosphere at Miramax is invigorating. It's like a mobile cardiology unit: there's a general sense of tension which is only broken up by moments of mania. They have 50 films in production at any one time, and there's always one going haywire. It's a three-cellphone culture. I'm the happiest I've been since Tatler. What we have is a creative cell inside a robust commercial company, Miramax, which has flair and financial success, and it's all backed by Disney, which is as solid as the Bank of America.

"There's no bureaucracy, we're hiring from scratch, and people are very willing to come and join us. It's very, very exhilarating. All we have to do is produce a magazine that everyone wants to buy."

Oh yes, that. Okay, but if articles are to be written with a view to extending them into other media, won't that damage the journalistic concept of what is originally published? Is her big idea possible? Well, let's take this article here. Can this material evolve into new forms in other media? You'd have to agree that there's a 10,000-word magazine retrospective of Tina's career here. It would cover the court at Conde Nast, its billionaire owner - the extravagance, the extravaganza, the staff who are so indulged that, for example, when they travel, they Fedex their luggage to their destination because it isn't done to be seen carrying things from the airport.

This long article would unpack the political theme of how organisations change, and how the changes are resisted. We'd get a portrait of The New Yorker, the most respected literary weekly in America, where there were (indeed, are) punctuation editors, and writers might take years to come up with an article.

And in this long piece, we would relish the comedy of the East-Coast literateurs bumping up against a more modern idea of what magazines are. We'd hear about the scoops, the severances, the buzz, the controversial articles, and the "do we have to know this?" pieces, such as Paul Theroux on dominatrices, and Daphne Merkin on her commanding interest in being spanked. But also the big stuff on Rwanda, the Attorney General, and Shakespeare.

So, using this as source material, can we proceed synergetically? Out of this extended article, there are clearly two books possible. The first is a career biography, with its theme of change and its context of byzantine opulence and intrigue. The second is a novel, perhaps in the genre of Bonfire of the Vanities, with a plucky English heroine pitting herself against the forces of reaction, taking on the establishment and winning.

As the book, or books, are published, a Tina TV-documentary is broadcast. This interviews her friends and enemies, uses newspaper cuts and footage to measure her achievements, and compares the facts of her career with the fictionalised version.

Finally, the novel is turned into a moody film about Manhattan powerbrokers and billionaires, with Kristin Scott-Thomas playing a version of the American dream. It's The English Patient crossed with Wall Street, but ending like Chariots of Fire.

That's a synergetic plan. Would everyone want to read it? Well, that would doubtless depend on the commissioning, the writing, the editing, and the people involved. It would also depend on whether the team was the First XI; on whether everyone could deliver. Tina says: "I vowed I would never go into business with partners who couldn't deliver. The Weinsteins are everything you could want. Fiscally prudent, fantastic promoters, and they've got great taste."

There's no greater risk than publishing new magazines. But if anyone can do it, you would have to assume that Tina Brown can. After all, she always has done before.