Will Tina stick around?

Mickey Kaus Columnist
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kausfiles Leans Forward! So does Tina Brown stick around for the agonizing slo-mo death of the Newsweek print edition, the historic property she has conspicuously failed to revive? I’m thinking no. Unless Barry Diller finds another sucker civic-minded patron to carry the print version for another couple of years. … Or maybe another Hillary cover! That’s the ticket. … It’s lucky I’m not bitter and vengeful! … P.S.:  Whole lotta talent going down with this ship. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Frum …

Update: Tina Brown memo says there’s nothing to worry about! Newsweek is “evolving [its] plan for the year ’13, with many options to choose from.” That settles it. And you can take it to the bank. Unless you are Barry Diller.

More: Alert Reader R dissents: “The question of whether Tina will stick around presumes she has anywhere else to go.”

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Boilerplate Conflict of Interest disclosure:

Possible reasons I might have it in for Newsweek/Daily Beast include: 1) This blog once was at Newsweek. Tina didn’t want it; 2) Their first print issue was crap, and not holdover crap but corrupting new suck-up-to-Hillary-with-unreadable-cover-story-so-she’ll-come-to-your-BS-conference crap; 3) They are pursuing an outmoded big bucks/big hype model of journalism that rightfully doesn’t work so well any more, partly because it depends on fawning publicity-givers and sheep-like readers to overlook things like point (2); 4) They suck up to Hollywood studios and chase celebrity bylines; 5) The Beast site exudes a soul-deadening desperation in the pursuit of faux fun and engineered “buzz;” 6) It started out with a subtle, insidious liberal bias that was far more annoying than HuffPo‘s former straightforward liberal bias. Now it is less subtle; 7) The Beast‘s little news summaries read like they are written by 21 year old interns who don’t know what they are writing about (see, e.g., the Beast‘s obit blurb for Warren Christopher, which said, among other things, that ”Christopher served as the overseer for the Florida election recount in 2000 before the Supreme Court stepped in and took over control.” Huh?) 8 )They are a slow-moving, profusely bleeding target and attacking them is fun. …

Mickey Kaus