Vanity Fair's ex-editor shifts to aggregating news

A fresh site for aggregating links to the hottest news stories is coming courtesy of Barry Diller and Tina Brown.

Diller and his InterActiveCorp business will bankroll the effort, which doesn't have a name or a launch date. The site will be run by Brown, the so-called "Queen of Buzz" famous for having once been the editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

Brown also authored The Diana Chronicles, her tell-all book about Princess Diana, and is writing The Clinton Chronicles for release in 2010.

Diller, IAC, and Brown aren't discussing details of their venture, though published reports have former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Edward Felsenthal as the site's planned editor.

Diller recently won his legal battle with Liberty Media Chairman John Malone for control over IAC, and insiders said the victory was instrumental in moving the Brown project forward.

Although several published reports are comparing the concept of the Diller-Brown site to the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report is a closer analogy because the big draw to the former is its original blog content while Drudge relies mainly on links to outside news sources.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the Drudge Report had 3.5 million unique visitors in February who each spent an average of one hour on the site, while the Huffington Post had 3.8 million visitors who each spent eight minutes on the site.