Tuned In

New Beast on the Block

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Once and future print-magazine editor Brown.

Tina Brown is back in the magazine business! After some fits and starts in the deal, Brown’s (and Barry Diller’s) The Daily Beast website and the new ownership of Newsweek have worked out a deal by which the two entities will combine, with Brown as the editor in chief of both. TIME being the Coke to Newsweek’s Pepsi—or the Butterfinger to its Clark bar, or something like that—this is one of those subjects I probably can’t analyze and expect to be taken as a credible party, so I’ll punt it to you all for now.

I will say that (1) I was a fan of Tina Brown’s New Yorker [disclosure: I very briefly freelanced for her Talk magazine], (2) I’m glad to see Newsweek settle its editorial search and wish it well, because simply selfishly I think strong competition is good for TIME, and (3) I have a lot of great colleagues at both Newsweek and The Daily Beast, so I hope the whole merger shakes out well for them.

Beyond that, this is an interesting crossroads for the magazine, so I’ll ask: what would you like to see from a new Newsweek (or, by extension, from TIME)?