Tina Brown enters Hall of Fame

The controversial British journalist Tina Brown, known for putting a naked, pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair and for putting many a writer's nose out of joint when she took over the venerable New Yorker from editor Bob Gottlieb, will be inducted into the American Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in New York today.

Brown first made an impact when she became editor of Tatler in 1979, aged just 25, and quickly tripled the magazine's circulation. In 1983 she moved to New York as editor of Vanity Fair where, during her eight-year tenure, she became one of the most high-profile editors in the US. From there she moved to the New Yorker, where she boosted its circulation by introducing photography and shorter articles, but made enemies among traditional readers and contributors. To make matters worse, the magazine continued to lose money.

In 1998, Brown left the New Yorker following an invitation from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax Films to launch Talk magazine. The venture was badly hit by the advertising recession following the attacks on September 11 2001, and it closed later that year. (Continued below)

A new career as a biographer has won her praise. Her first book, The Diana Chronicles, was published last year, and she has recently signed a deal to 'chronicle' the lives of Bill and Hillary Clinton, to be published in 2010. Brown, married to the former Sunday Times editor Sir Harry Evans, is sanguine about her success in magazines. "The Eighties and Nineties were the glory era for magazines," she said this week. "It is definitely harder for magazine editors now, with the intensity of the internet."