DATELINE–New York

Sources close to Tina Brown claim that her decision to leave her post as editor-in-chief of the New Yorker magazine for an undisclosed position with Miramax films may be connected to recent troubles at CNN-Time Warner, the New Republic magazine, and the Boston Globe.

Six years ago Brown was lured from her position as chief editor at Vanity Fair to rejuvenate the financially flailing New Yorker. Under her control, the New Yorker won nearly two dozen awards and newsstand sales rose 145 percent. But she has also been criticized for what some call the vulgarization of a venerable American literary institution that has had only four editors in its nearly 75-year history.

Despite longtime support from publisher S.I. Newhouse, Brown reportedly felt stymied in her efforts to develop new revenue streams for the New Yorker, including a planned book publishing division. While details of her deal with Miramax have not yet been made public, Brown told the Wall Street Journal that it will include a new monthly magazine, films, television shows, and a line of books.

Her early departure for Miramax, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Co., is drawing added media attention in light of allegations now being made by sources near Brown. According to rumors, Brown’s forthcoming venture with Miramax was to have drawn upon the talents of an innovative mix of journalistic and literary stars. Now, some of the same rising stars who were slated to join Brown at Miramax have been implicated in a wide-ranging media scandal featuring nonexistent sources and fabricated quotations.

In May of this year, Forbes magazine reported that writer Stephen Glass had largely confabulated a story about computer hackers published in the New Republic. By June, two more incidents of media misconduct had been exposed. The first involved Boston Globe columnist and 1998 Pulitzer Prize finalist Patricia Smith, who admitted to fabricating anecdotes and characters in several of her columns. The second involved the highly publicized retraction of a June 7, 1998, report that aired on the debut episode of a joint CNN-Time magazine news program. In the investigative report, Peter Arnett alleged that U.S. commandos used nerve gas against American defectors during the Vietnam War.

In the wake of these sensational scandals both Glass and Smith were summarily fired for their literary high jinks. Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize 20 years ago for his coverage of the Vietnam War, will keep his job after receiving a severe reprimand from the network. Yet despite their high-profile flubs, all three journalists are still listed on the roster of writers said to be joining Brown at Miramax.

According to Silvia Lottringer, an editorial advisor to the Columbia Journalism Review, “the possibility that such controversial journalists, now infamous for distorting fact with fiction, are still on Brown’s team at Miramax says a lot about the novelty of the product being developed.”

Equally noteworthy are the circumstances under which the hybrid news and entertainment project was conceived. In 1997 Tina Brown and Disney CEO Michael Eisner cohosted a summit called the NEXT Conference at the Disney Institute in Orlando, Fla. During the two-day event notables from the worlds of news, entertainment, and politics gathered to discuss the future of media and the Internet. It was on the return flight to New York that Miramax cochair Harvey Weinstein first approached Brown with the idea of a joint venture to produce a multimedia mélange of fictionalized news and new fictions.

Media analysts have already described the partnership between Brown and Miramax as capitalizing on the potential for “synergy” between a news-gathering agency and an entertainment company. According to a report by Janny Scott and Geraldine Fabrikant published on July 9, 1998, by the New York Times, such a collaboration would allow Brown to “dig up the kind of articles that might then be turned into movies and television specials that Miramax, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., would have the capacity to help package, circulate, and promote.”