Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk magazines, credits her success in journalism to two things: timing and her ability to see job offers not just for what they are but rather for what they can become.
"You have to be able to look beyond what you're being offered," she advised the students who had gathered in the Calhoun College master's house on April 24 to hear her speak. "Little things can lead to great opportunities."
Brown's own journalism career started with writing for a small campus magazine, Isis, while she studied at St. Anne's College of Oxford University. An article she wrote for Isis caught the attention of the editor of the New Statesman, who hired her as the Oxford University stringer for the weekly news magazine. By the time Brown graduated from St. Anne's in 1974, she had accumulated a portfolio of published work. That portfolio helped her land a much-coveted job writing for the style section of the Sunday Times.
At the age of 25, in what was considered "a huge step down" for her career, Brown said, she accepted the editorship of Tatler, which covered society and the royal family. Numerous others had turned down the editing position before she accepted it. "Tatler at that time was outdated, unfashionable," the journalist admitted. "No one wanted to edit it." But she was able to see what the magazine could be as opposed to what it was, she noted.
"It's easy to be unimaginative about job offers," Brown said, recounting how people are always waiting for the "big jobs in big corporations." She described those jobs as "killers," saying that all the good people she's hired have come from small jobs, where they have to do everything as opposed to being a small cog in a big wheel.
Brown's gamble with Tatler paid off in 1981 when the magazine covered one of the nation's biggest society stories: the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana. All of a sudden, "everyone wanted to know about this world they hadn't cared about," she said. Tatler's circulation went from 10,000 to 40,000, and the magazine was later purchased by Condé Nast. Brown went on to help revive Condé Nast's Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
Timing helped build Brown's career, and also hurt it, she said. Her latest magazine venture, Talk, folded earlier this year due to the economic panic and recession following the Sept. 11 tragedy. "Timing is everything," Brown said, insisting that if Talk's contracts with its partners, Hearst Magazines and Miramax, had been up for renewal even a month later, the magazine would still exist today.
Brown remains chair of Miramax's Talk Media division, which includes Talk Miramax Books.
-- By JinAh Lee
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