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Tina Brown, like her friend Arianna Huffington, is a mainstream media figure turned web mistress. Her new property, The Daily Beast, launched this morning.

Brown describes her creation:

It’s a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors. The Daily Beast doesn’t aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. We’re as much about what’s not there as what is. And we freshen the stream with a good helping of our own original content from a wonderfully diverse group of contributors

From a design perspective, it’s easy to see the homage to tabloids. Brown told paidContent, “I’ve always loved the look of the European smart tabloids—La Republica., El Pais … There’s a lot to be said for the sex appeal of the tabloid flavor but then incorporating into that really terrific writing and good thinking.”

Barry Diller is backing the new pub, named for a fictional newspaper in the Evelyn Waugh novel, Scoop.