Daily Beast

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:53pm on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

The Daily Beast interviewed itself about the first anniversary of the website on October 6, 2009.

"As The Daily Beast marks its first anniversary, co-founder and editor-in-chief Tina Brown talks about the year's surprises, obsessive commenters, print's premature obit, Sarah Palin, Sexy Beast ... and what's next for the site.

So how was your first year at The Daily Beast?

Excellent! I’ve finally found a medium commensurate to my peculiar metabolism. I revel in the immediacy, the responsiveness, the real-time-ness. I used to be the impatient type. Now I’m the serene type. Because how can you be impatient when everything happens right now, instantly? No more waiting around for factories to print magazines on dead trees and fueling up trucks to deliver them. This isn’t just faster, it’s greener. Plus I’m working with a brilliant young staff and a superb executive editor, Edward Felsenthal, who runs the show.

How’s traffic these days?

Beyond our wildest hopes when we started last October. We closed September at 3.9 million monthly unique readers and 35 million page views, which is up 70 percent and 220 percent, respectively, since our first month. It took me eight years to build Vanity Fair to less than half that number. And the readers are loyal: 60 percent of them come back again within 24 hours. Of course, keeping ‘em satisfied is a 24/7 task. I know what the tireless blogger Andrew Sullivan means when he told me last summer that he sometimes feels like Fay Wray dancing in front of King Kong."

The full story:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-05/the-daily-beast-turns-one