When Tina Brown turned her back on magazines a year ago to launch a website called The Daily Beast , some scoffed in the media world she once reigned as editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker .

What, the critics asked, did a woman whose career had spanned lavish glossies from Tatler to Talk, know about the demands of online journalism? And what space was there for what sounded like yet another aggregator-blog hybrid, even if it was to be leavened by contributions from Ms Brown's famous contact book?