Brown attacks newspapers’ “zombie” management

Tim Burrowes

December 12, 2008 4:31

The only people failing to pay the price of hard times in publishing is the management, claims former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown.

Her attack is on the culture of US old media companies:

There are floors of feckless zombies in any behemoth media company, buzzing about each day thwarting new ideas or, worse, having “transformative” ideas of their own.

Arguably that puts the US behind Australia, where Fairfax last week said goodbye to CEO David Kirk, and there’s just been a wholesale clearout of the West Australian’s board of management.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.