By Jeffrey Blyth
Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown offered to pay for a replate of an issue of The Spectator because she disliked the headline on a piece she wrote about Hillary Clinton, according to American title New York Magazine.
The Spectator piece, on Hillary’s possible bid for the American presidency, was headlined “Can Anything Stop Hillary? Yes, says Tina Brown, Another Sex Scandal Involving her Husband Could Seriously Damage Hillary Clinton’s Bid for the White House”.
New York Magazine, quoting sources supposedly close to the then editor Boris Johnson, said Tina was very upset when she learned of the headline, and rang up pleading for it to be changed, apparently worried that it would damage her relationship with Hillary – but she was told it was too late because the magazine had already gone to press.
According to the magazine, she then asked if she could pay to reprint the issue, but was told that too was impossible, although the magazine did agree to change the headline on its website to read “Can Anything Stop Hillary? No, says Tina Brown. Only if Bill Clinton becomes a Liability instead of an Asset”.
Brown has denied the claim. Her response to New York Magazine was: “Are you kidding?”
● Meanwhile, back in the UK, Spectator columnist Stephen Glover has announced he is leaving the title for the second time – this time after being sacked by publisher Andrew Neil.
Glover resigned as a weekly columnist last year after Boris Johnson censored an article about sackings at The Daily Telegraph, returning on a monthly basis in November.
This time round he claims he was given the boot by Neil for a column he wrote in The Independent, again about The Telegraph.
In The Independent this week, he told readers: “It would be difficult to think of someone more at odds with everything The Spectator stands for than Mr Neil.”
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