Zeitgeist Genius Tina Brown on Meghan Markle, Vanity Fair and Whether We Still Need Editors

Tina Brown has shaped the culture and captured the zeitgeist since she reinvented Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the 1980s and 1990s. But now, she’s moved onto the digital media space with her Substack, Fresh Hell. This week, Ben and Max talk to the magazine icon about what she makes of the state of print media today, if we still need editors in a world filled with influencers, and what she thinks the future holds for her former employer, Condé Nast. They also talk about her gripes with our current “uncouth” culture, how we’ve all become “scavengers of info,” and the stories she would assign today if she could.

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Every Friday media reporter Max Tani and Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith pull back the curtain on the most important stories about media, revealing why you see and hear what you see and hear.

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• No. of episodes: 43
• Latest episode: 2025-05-02
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