Tina Brown: Newsweek Daily Beast Co. will be profitable in ‘two to three years’

There was a moment during the chattery outset of Monday night's New York Deadline Club Awards dinner when Newsweek Daily Beast Company editor-in-chief Tina Brown appeared to be lost in thought.

Seated at the head table inside the Waldorf Astoria's opulent Empire Room, flanked by veteran New York Post media reporter Keith Kelly and Jane Harman, the widow of recently deceased Newsweek benefactor Sidney Harman, Brown stared into space for a good 30 seconds.

Perhaps she was considering the future of the magazine that became part of her empire last November. (Newsweek hemorrhaged nearly $40 million in the two years prior to her editorial stewardship and is now struggling to regain the ad pages it lost in the wake of its merger with the Daily Beast.) Perhaps she was recalling last month's royal wedding in her native London, where Brown weighed in on the historic nuptials for ABC News. Or was she pondering the 2012 U.S. presidential election, which she will no doubt follow closely in both her print and online publications?

In any case, Brown aired her views on all these subject during an interview with Kelly--one of her many tireless chroniclers in the press--an hour or so later.

First question: "Can Newsweek as an entity survive?" Kelly asked.

"No publication today can exist without reinventing itself," Brown replied. "Newsweek has a terrific role to play." She explained the difference between putting out an introspective weekly magazine and an immediate daily website, concluding: "The great strength of this merged operation is that we are working on both."

"Sounds like a great plan," Kelly chimed in--but when will the operation be profitable?

The Daily Beast, Brown reminded her questioner, was conceived in 2008 on a five-year business plan, "on which we are very, very handsomely along the way." Newsweek, meanwhile, "is an iconic global brand," one that landed 40 new ad campaigns in 40 days earlier this year, she said, "so we have absolute confidence, given this new world we're in, given the energy of the Daily Beast digital brand, that we can reactivate Newsweek."

And now for the short answer: "In the next two to three years," she said. Kelly repeated her response for confirmation; Brown nodded.

Before the Q&A, Jane Harman, who happened to be in town for the birth of her fourth grandchild (6 lbs., 10 oz.)--and was therefore available to introduce Brown in place of Sidney Harman--reiterated her family's commitment to the magazine. Harman's husband acquired Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. last summer for $1 plus a mountain of debt. Jane assumed Sidney's seat on the company board 10 days after he died suddenly of leukemia on April 12; last night was her first public appearance in this new role.

"The combination is more than the sum of the parts," the former California congresswoman said of the joint venture. She then proudly rattled off some stats: Newsweek has 32 ad pages in its current issue and has seen a 57 percent rise in newsstand sales since Brown took over; the Daily Beast has increased its ads by 300 percent and increased its traffic by 51 percent in the past year, bringing the two publications' combined unique monthly visitors to roughly 9 million, Harman bragged, "So there!" She also spoke lovingly of her departed husband: "He died way too young at almost 93."

But the late Harman was not the only newsman eulogized during the annual event, which honors excellence in New York-area journalism. Moments of silence were observed for four journalists who recently passed away, including photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, who were killed in a blast last month while covering the conflict in Libya.

"Tim was actually a Deadline Club finalist in 2009 for a spot news photo he took for Vanity Fair," said Rebecca Baker, the organization's president.

This year's finalists included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the Associated Press and The Forward, each of which took home an award.

(Evan Agostini/AP)