So Tina Brown has lost the design superstar who was supposed to be sprinkling magic dust over her benighted news aggregation website. The former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor—whose internet project is backed by Barry Diller—said she'd hired Ian Adelman, well-regarded design director of New York magazine's website when outsiders first got wind of the new venture. Now Keith Kelly reports that Adelman is back with his former employer.

Sometimes hires don't work out, particularly in the early stages of a new company, so no blame attaches there. But here's what I don't understand: why do magazine industry veterans like Tina Brown and Radar's Maer Roshan insist on encouraging buzz so long before launch? Premature promotion no longer works: pre-announcements of big-name hires just leave hostages to fortune, such as the one just executed by Keith Kelly; the hype cycle has become compressed in an age of instant contrarianism; and this week's excitement is next week's disappointment.

True, Tina Brown—New York's former queen of buzz—can't help but attract attention. The storyline—the 55-year-old doyenne of glossy magazines would reinvent herself as an internet entrepreneur—is irresistible. But Brown's probably been briefing media reporters, and she should resist the habit. Remember her magazine start-up, Talk. "Talk became this kind of hysterically over-inflated sort of media story," she remembered, last year. "And it was fun for people to write about. I thought that it was a little excessive at times. But I'm kind of used to that at this point."

After the failure of Talk, the expectations are now less weighty. Anything better than sheer embarrassment would count as success. If Tina Brown could only keep quiet, she might even be able to pull off a surprise.