Tina Reinvents the Web

"I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't Tina," Buckley says. But, he says of his new blogging home, "it is an insatiable beast. It doesn't take time to digest its food before it wants the next post."

MSNBC's Carlson recently posted a piece titled "Why are Christians having better sex than the rest of us?"

"I love Tina," he says. "She's totally open-minded. She has a single criterion: Is it interesting? She's never said, 'That doesn't fit my political view.' "

Brown describes her politics as "centrist," but she often seems to lean left. She recently described the Bush administration as a "Halloween shop of horrors." She launched Talk in 1999 with an exclusive interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton and, in the New Yorker, once gushed over Bill ("his height, his sleekness, his newly cropped, iron-filing hair, and the intensity of his blue eyes"). She is working on a book about the Clintons. But the Daily Beast routinely publishes pieces by conservatives, including attention-grabbing essays by former John McCain advisers Mark Salter and Mark McKinnon.

"It's like a dinner party where people are arguing from both sides," Brown says. "The New York Times columnists are terrific, but I kind of know what they're going to say."

Brown, a onetime Washington Post columnist, is a master at generating attention. She blogged last week that liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow should be tapped for "Meet the Press," a suggestion that was widely picked up. "I was being mischievous," she says with British understatement.

Some early accounts focused on a rivalry with Brown's old friend Arianna Huffington, because the Beast is obviously competing with the Huffington Post, one of the most popular liberal sites. Brown says she is "hugely admiring" of Huffington and calls the media chatter "irresistible, because it's so much fun. If there isn't a catfight, you have to invent one."

Brown launched Talk with an 800-guest party at the Statue of Liberty, but the Beast was rolled out quietly. She spent months trying to master the tools of the Net -- "completely freaked out" that she didn't have an art department -- and assembled a staff that included Wall Street Journal veteran Ed Felsenthal as executive editor. "I knew with Tina at the helm it would be real journalism," he says.

Brown starts firing off e-mails to her staff at 5 a.m. "Tina's a machine," says Caroline Marks, the Australian-born general manager. "She keeps pumping juice into the brand with her appearances. Tina is always on. This is a medium made for her."

During a recent morning meeting, Brown's predilections are on display as a half-dozen staffers, most of them young, gather around her desk. Brown is marveling at the depth of the reader feedback on her Maddow piece. "I've become addicted to the comments," she says.

The talk turns to the latest hot topics. "Sarah Palin is crack cocaine to the Internet," Brown observes.

A constant question is how long to display stories prominently before bumping them for newer fare. "Tucker on sex is down, but I think it's been up long enough, frankly," Felsenthal says.