Tina Brown and The Beast

Nobody could accuse Tina Brown (pictured) of being a slacker. In a 35-year career as a journalist she has edited Tatler, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and, with notably less success, Talk magazine, which folded in 2002. Because of this, media pundits are getting understandably excited about her latest venture, an online news service called The Daily Beast, which went live today.

The Beast, named after the newspaper in Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop, operates out of New York and is described as a "smart one-stop news shop" which hopes to "break new ground in news aggregation by mixing lots of outbound links with heavy doses of curation and original content".

Brown’s lastest venture is funded by IAC (Interactive Internet Conglomerate), which owns the Ticketmaster ticket agency and Ask.com search engine. Casting modesty to the wind, Brown, 55, says: "I've come to feel word of mouth is reshaping media and culture and we're building a site where the rationale is word of mouth, the word of mouth of people we feel are interesting and feel have something to say and offer and know something.” To charges that she has “come to feel this” a little late in the day – after all, news aggregation sites are already some of the most successful on the internet - she responds: “There are other places where you can get aggregation, sure, but ultimately this will work — or not — depending on whether you like the sensibility of the people choosing it." (Continued below)

At present there is no advertising. Brown says this isn't because there are no takers, but because initially she is "only focusing on the content and building the audience". The business model is also based on syndication and some "pretty aggressive traffic deals".

The site already has its detractors. US blog site Gawker claims that no young audience will understand where the website derives its name. Brown is unbothered: "It's an inside joke for the lit set. Some people get it and some people don't, but that was the whole point."