Media

 NY Times - “We are the ultimate trophies for American billionaires,” joked Joanna Coles, the English-born editor who in April became head of The Daily Beast, the online news outlet itself named after a newspaper in an Evelyn Waugh novel. Ms. Coles has not hesitated to recruit more of her compatriots, installing a Scot as editor in chief and a Guardian reporter as Washington bureau chief.“We are loading up on Brits,” she said in an interview.

Theories abound as to the enduring appeal of British editors to American proprietors. The accent has its own worldly allure. But hard-nosed, scrappy journalism is a cherished tradition in Britain, where broadsheets and tabloids have battled it out for decades, often on budgets dwarfed by American rivals.British journalists tend to be lower paid than their American counterparts, an advantage for many news organizations already facing cutbacks. And while Fleet Street has a reputation for fuzzy ethics, that goes hand in hand with a reader-pleasing willingness to scorch sacred cows.“I do think that the British press is much less self-important, and what I call the elite press in the U.S. is far more sententious about their place in the world,” Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast, said in an interview.