By Paul Bond
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) -
Move over, Matt Drudge.
A fresh site for aggregating links to the hottest news stories
is coming courtesy of Barry Diller and Tina Brown.
Diller' and his IAC/InterActiveCorp. business will bankroll
the effort, which doesn't have a name or a launch date. The
site will be run by Brown, the so-called "Queen of Buzz" famous
for having once been the editor of Vanity Fair and the New
Yorker.
Brown also authored "The Diana Chronicles," her tell-all
book about Princess Diana, and is writing "The Clinton
Chronicles" for release in 2010.
Diller, IAC and Brown aren't discussing details of their
venture, though published reports have former Wall Street
Journal deputy managing editor Edward Felsenthal as the site's
planned editor.
Diller recently won his legal battle with Liberty Media
chairman John Malone for control over IAC, and insiders said
the victory was instrumental in moving the Brown project
forward.
The new site might be nonpartisan and feature links to
worthwhile news stories from many sources, as opposed to
relying on its own content.
Although several published reports are comparing the
concept of the Diller-Brown site to the Huffington Post, the
Drudge Report is a closer analogy because the big draw to the
former is its original blog content while Drudge relies mainly
on links to outside news sources.
The Huffington Post, run by Brown's friend Arianna
Huffington, by some accounts, is worth $200 million, many times
more than the published speculation of the worth of the Drudge
Report. That figure, though, is surely an exaggeration, as the
Drudge Report, run on a shoestring budget, is no doubt
profitable while the Huffington Post is a money loser.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the Drudge Report had 3.5
million unique visitors in February who each spent an average
of one hour on the site, while the Huffington Post had 3.8
million visitors who each spent eight minutes on the site.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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