Monday, February 21, 2011

Editor Tina Brown learns from Talk Magazine mistakes

There's an important difference between the kind of mistake stories you find here at the Mistake Bank and those you may read elsewhere. Here we focus on first-person stories. "I made this mistake, and here is what I learned." In other places you'll read about others' mistakes; say, Lindsay Lohan's.

The Mistake Bank is about learning from experience. The other type of story is about schadenfreude. Making us feel better about ourselves by dwelling on the problems of another. The dubious pleasure of schadenfreude lasts a few moments. Learning from our mistakes and others' lasts a lifetime.

Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, talked to the New York Times ("At Newsweek, a Humble and Frugal Tina Brown") about her planned relaunch of Newsweek magazine, and shared this brief mistake story:

Ms. Brown would not reveal anything about the contents of the redesigned magazine or its debut. “We’re only going to do it when we’re ready, let’s put it that way,” she said in the interview. Between answering questions, she clicked through her BlackBerry, scanning e-mail.

“I think that big, sort of theatrical relaunches tend to set you up for failure and hype,” she added. “And you know we — I — went through that at Talk magazine, and it was a mistake.”

This is remarkable to me for several reasons. First of all, Tina Brown is not the first person you think of for being reflective or, as the Times headlines states, "humble." Second, she makes a subtle but profound shift in her statement. She first says, "you know we..." then shifts to "I went through that at Talk magazine, and it was a mistake."

Tina took ownership for the theatrical launch contributing to hype and ultimately failure at Talk. As such, she put herself in the position to learn from it, and not repeat it, in her new assignment. I respect that a lot, and look forward to what Newsweek will unveil in March 2011.

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