Media: Hello, this is Tina: I'd like to buy your soul

It's the call every New York writer is waiting for: a deal with Talk Media. But agents are already taking fright at the contracts. Has Tina Brown gone overboard? By David Usborne

It is an early spring morning and the journalist is conscious but disinclined to stir. He has projects. Of course he has projects, but none of them is urgent. But then the bedside phone starts to ring. "Tina Brown would like to see you."

Oh, God. The fantasy that has been consuming him for nearly a year is suddenly upon him. The meeting is now, today.

This has been the thrill scenario for scores of under-employed writers in recent weeks. "There's probably not a freelancer in town who is not working for her right now," reports one, who got the wake-up call in New York two and a half months ago. And it has been happening in London too. Rich contracts have been offered and some have been signed - though frequently not at all on the terms Ms Brown has sought.

British-born Ms Brown, who was long ago crowned "the Queen of Buzz" in New York for her zeitgeist-inspired editing first of Vanity Fair here and, from 1992 until last year, of The New Yorker, is about to launch Talk, an altogether new general interest magazine. The monthly's imminent birth - the inaugural issue will hit news-stands on 10 August - will be the media event of the year, if not the decade.

Preparations for Talk's debut will hit top gear this week. Ms Brown and her crew of young editors must finally settle on the contents of issue number one by this Friday. The cover story, it is rumoured, will be an interview with Hillary Clinton, touching on her putative New York Senate run and, of course, her marriage. Ms Brown herself, according to the gossip, did the interview and will write the piece. There will be a monster launch party at the Brooklyn Navy Yards on 2 August (attendees will include Robert De Niro). The target circulation, through stand sales and subscriptions, is 500,000, of which about 25,000 copies will be shipped every month for sale in Britain.

Guessing at the exact format of Talk has become a favourite Manhattan sport. At the magazine itself, which is co-owned by Miramax, the art-film subsidiary of the Disney Company, and by long-time magazine leviathan Hearst, all lips are sealed. What we expect, however, is something half- way between her two former magazines, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, with the look of European periodicals like Germany's Stern and The Economist. It will be stapled, not perfect bound, and will have a high photographic content.

And it is certain to dazzle. It is not for nothing that Ms Brown is the envy of every editor in the western hemisphere and the dream boss of any reporter. Assuming her touch has not deserted her, Talk will be smart, slick and gripping.

The first issue, at least, will be a must-read from TriBeCa to Hampstead Heath. Some of the talent corralled for Talk has already been identified. Look for Martin Amis, Tom Stoppard, George Plimpton and former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos. The "George Stephanopoulos Interview" is set to appear in every other issue. (There will be ten issues in a year.)

Writers' hopes and ambitions are focused on Talk because it will be more than just a magazine. Talk Media, the publishing company, has much bolder - and, in some eyes, perfectly batty - ambitions. It will also be an experiment in cross-pollination of writers' talents between the magazine itself, a Talk book imprint that will open its doors next January, and the film business. The Hollywood angle, of course, is where the Miramax ownership comes in - and the close involvement in the entire project of its showman president, Harvey Weinstein.

Rarely has a promise of corporate synergy been so seductive. For prospective writers, Talk offers a one-stop-shop, offering not just exposure in the magazine but potential book and film treatments. Martin Amis is the model of what Brown envisioned. Through his New York agent, Andrew Wylie, he has negotiated a multi-year deal with Talk Media that commits him to three works for the book imprint - a novel, a collection of essays and a memoir - a film treatment and, of course, occasional pieces for the magazine.

It was with the same multi-exposure notion in mind that Ms Brown pursued another London author and columnist. "A few weeks ago, I got this call from Tina Brown's office," recalled the diarist Francis Wheen, currently a contributor to The Observer and Private Eye. "She was in London and desperately needed to see me. Could I have breakfast with her at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge?" Of course he could. Wheen, who has written a book about Karl Marx that will be published in Britain by Fourth Estate in October, found Brown gasping for him over her grapefruit. "She just sort of fell all over me."

Brown proposed that excerpts of Francis Wheen's Marx book be run over successive issues of the magazine. She even suggested that Ralph Fiennes might play Marx in a Miramax movie treatment. At the same time that Wheen was getting the full treatment at the Berkeley, his editor from Fourth Estate, Victoria Barnsley, found herself summoned to Talk HQ in Manhattan.

Mr Weinstein's enthusiasm outstripped even Tina's. On learning that the editor was leaving the same day for Los Angeles, he flew her there himself in his Miramax jet and en route declared that he wanted more than just the Karl Marx book. He would like to buy Fourth Estate outright. At once. (The editor politely demurred, mumbling something about shareholders.)

Behind all this fighting talk there is the sheer promotional heft of Miramax and Disney. Ron Galotti, the publisher of Talk magazine and a former publisher of Conde Nast-owned Vanity Fair, is said to be tantalising advertisers in the monthly with possible product-placement deals in future Miramax films. And starting this week, millions of renters of the video releases of Miramax blockbusters such as Shakespeare in Love will be treated first to a 60-second plug of Talk magazine fronted by Ms Brown herself.

"I think the new century needs a new magazine with a new voice," she gushes in the promo. "Conversation! ... Discussion! ... Chatter! ... Context! ... Emotion! ... Intimacy!"

Could the stakes for Ms Brown, whose husband is former Times and Sunday Times editor, Harold Evans, be any higher? If Talk Media recoups Weinstein and Hearst's initial investment - believed to be about $50 million - she will be offered both her own stake in Talk Media and profit participation. That, friends say, is what drew her to leave The New Yorker for Mr Weinstein last July. And if all goes to plan, the doorway into book publishing and movie-making will be hers to step through as well. Already there is the prospect of a Tina Brown hour on the ABC TV network (also owned by Disney). Thereafter, watch for Tina Brown the Hollywood mogul.

Unless, of course, the entire Talk edifice comes crashing down on her first. There are genuine reasons to worry. This is the time of the Internet, not of print. The TV industry is in turmoil and as for book publishing, it has rarely been in trickier straits. Moreover, the first crop of titles signed for the book imprint by its young editor, Jonathan Burnham, also a Brit, has drawn accusations of seriousness. Besides Amis, Burnham has bought a history of Britain from historian Simon Schama and a money-making guide based on the bard: "Shakespeare in Charge: Making your own Play in Business". Pardon?

And word has been leaking already of disquiet over financial extravagance in senior ranks of both Disney and Hearst. "They hear she is getting whole pastures of fresh-cut flowers delivered to her office every day," says one source close to conservative-minded Hearst. "They are fuming about her over there".

And then there are the contract negotiations. For Brown, these have not been going well. More established writers, and certainly their agents, rather than being delighted by the magazine-books-movies dynamic have been somewhat suspicious. Talk has been asking for rights across the board from the outset and the talent has been balking. Ron Bernstein, of the LA-based Gersch agency, whose clients include Alex Garland, recently did a million-dollar-deal for another client with Talk. The contract offered by Brown did not impress.

"When some of the clauses came in I just roared with laughter they were so ridiculous," he recalled. "It was as if Talk was going somehow to be inventing my client. I don't think so!"

In the end, Bernstein signed, but the contract bore little resemblance to its first draft. None of the book and film rights was surrendered. Bernstein is meanwhile scornful of the agreement signed by Wylie for Amis. "He called it this `cutting edge deal', but really you could cut it with a butter knife."

Jealousy has always been attached to Brown. There are as many in the media monde who would like to knock her down as there are those who applaud her. (And many who do both.) What we don't know is whether enough readers will buy it. As for the inroads she is making into books and Hollywood, the consensus is sceptical. Some wits have noted that among the Miramax videos slated to carry Brown's minute-long plug, one is Little Voice and another Wishful Thinking.