The latest venture from Tina Brown, the doyenne of the New York magazine world, and author of the contentious Diana Chronicles published last year, is thedailybeast.com.

Named after the fictional newspaper satirised in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop, the site, launched on Tuesday, is a dazzling melange of news stories, opinion pieces, blogs, links and videos, with original content and pieces pulled together from all over the web. It’s apparently intended to compete with debating heavies such as huffingtonpost.com, but it is much trashier, at least in appearance, than its competitors and, perhaps unsurprisingly, feels more like a digital magazine than a news site.

Bloggers include Tina Brown herself and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch Muslim MP fleeing persecution for her comments on Islam, and there is a snazzy section called The Big Fat Story, which explores important issues on the news agenda via press clipping spider diagrams, such as “Is the press spooking the market?” Brown claims that it’s “a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors”. A smart edit from a merciless point of view?

A bit like her biographical style, some might say.

And another American queen bee (in this case, born and bred) continues her quest for world domination. Following on from the wildly successful sketch “Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad”, which has been watched 7.6 million times so far, in which Paris hit back after McCain dismissed her as a shallow celebrity, Paris has decided to continue her fake presidential campaign by seeking advice from “one of the best fake presidents this country has ever had”. Martin Sheen, aka President Bartlet from The West Wing, talks to Paris about Iraq, the economy and after-parties.

Watching Paris Hilton talking about interest rates and inflation is, rather annoyingly, very amusing. Love her or loathe her, like Jordan, this a gal who knows how to laugh at herself.

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