68 TIME December 11, 2017‘At the end of the
day, Donald Trump
is a man with a
golden tower and a
big airplane and a
model wife.’10 Questions
Tina Brown The longtime editor and
author ofThe Vanity Fair Diariestalks about
the President’s past and the media’s future
How would you grade the media’s
performance since Trump’s election?
I think we’ve seen a fantastic resurgence
in journalism in the last year. I’m very
excited by what journalists are doing
right now. I do worry very much about
the business model. I think it’s high time
that Facebook and Google created a vast
philanthropy fund to fund journalism.
They have stolen so much of it that it’s
high time they gave some of it back.You write, “Most of my role models
have been men. They always had the
lives I wanted.” Why? Particularly at
the time that I was growing up, men
had the jobs I wanted. I looked
around, and it was a man managing
TIME and it was a man editing
Newsweek and it was a man editing
Vanity Fair and a man managing
theNew Yorker. So I wanted to be
that. And so I admired the people
who were doing that.You launchedTalk magazine
with Harvey Weinstein.
Do you regret going into
business with him? I certainly
do. I regretted that long before the
sexual-harassment complaints.
I regretted it within about
25 minutes of signing the
contract. It was a very, shall we
say, unwise career move on my
part. I had no idea about what had
been happening. But the rest of his
personality did not make me think,
What a surprise.Do you think this generation of
women is different from the ones
that preceded it? I guess there’s safety
in numbers. And I think women have
often felt, “Oh, this is what it’s like.
I’m just going to take it.” And I think
it’s very, very good right now, even if
there’s an overcorrection for a time, for
a new culture to be set so that women
do not feel that it’s just part of life that
they have to put up with the kind of
behavior that we’re reading about.
—SAMUEL P. JACOBSFive years ago, when you edited your
last issue ofNewsweek, you seemed
so over print. What are you doing
publishing a book? I’m not over books.
You’re now publishing your diaries.
What do you keep private? There’s
plenty of that diary that didn’t make
it into publication. I’m an introverted,
offstage character. But I also love the
arena. I say in the book I’m a girl of
the arena. I like to be sitting there in the
heart of the action. The two strands pull
at me all the time.
One of the book’s most touching
stories is about raising your
son George, who has Asperger’s
syndrome. What has that been like?
There’s a lot of joy, because he’s so
unfiltered. When he met Anna Wintour
at my publishing party, he said to her,
“Are you Camilla Parker Bowles or some
other person from the ’80s?” Raising
Georgie has taught me how much we all
have to lie to make the world go around.
What don’t you miss about editing
Va n i t y Fa i r? I don’t miss the dinner
parties. My husband’s great motto is,
“The best dinner party is the one that’s
canceled.”
Your allergy to alcohol helped. I do
think that if I had had a drink in my
hand, I would not have been so beadily
observing whatever everyone was
saying and doing.
What advice do you have forVa n i t y
Fair’s new editor? Completely rip it up
and start again if you want. I’m a huge
believer in reinvention.
Donald Trump makes regular
appearances in the book. Why do
you think he won the White House?
There is something so deeply American
about his appeal. At the end of the
day, Donald Trump is a man with a
golden tower and a big airplane and a
model wife. That’s a very easy thing to
understand as a success story.
SYLVAIN GABOURY—PATRICK MCMULLAN/GETTY IMAGES