Magazines -- Downtown Tina Brown -- What Will She Change At The New Yorker?

NEW YORK - Tina Brown raised one of the burning questions herself.

"Will The New Yorker have Luke Perry on the cover?

"No," she laughed.

"Would it ever have a black-and-white photo from an upcoming show at the Museum of Modern Art?" she continued. "I don't know. I wouldn't like to say no, you know? I mean, obviously I have to leave myself open to seeing what works and what doesn't."

Brown, who will leave Vanity Fair later this month, has the summer to consider her plans for The New Yorker before taking over the highbrow magazine from editor Robert A. Gottlieb in September. Until then, she says, she would rather not speak so recklessly, so as not to become hostage to her words.

However, in an interview conducted after last week's stunning news that the champion of glitz and gloss would be entrusted with the stodgy and gray New Yorker, Brown, 38, pointed in the general direction she may go.

"Any editor does bring new blood and I guess there will be quite a bit of it," Brown remarked.

One of the first changes at The New Yorker may be among the magazine's staff critics. An associate of Brown's at Vanity Fair characterized The New Yorker's current reviewers as "abysmal," saying there were no longer "leading voices," as in the years when movie critic Pauline Kael was quoted around the country. Indeed, Stephen Schiff, now Vanity Fair's critic-at-large, is preparing to make the transition to West 43rd Street with Brown. Critic James Wolcott seems a safe bet to do the same.

Brown, who has published little fiction in Vanity Fair, also said she had yet to formulate plans regarding the New Yorker's literary component. Among those said to be distressed by Gottlieb's departure is Roger Angell, the New Yorker's much-admired baseball writer who, as fiction editor, has helped cultivate an audience for Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver and others. He said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment on the change.

Publisher S.I. Newhouse Jr. had cited "conceptual differences" between him and Gottlieb. What exactly were they?

"Well," Brown replied, "I think, mostly it was the fact that the readership had aged and that there must be ways to capture another generation of New Yorker readers. And in a way, that's what I have to figure out.

"The New Yorker will be very different from Vanity Fair," she explained later. "What I bring from Vanity Fair is my sense of story, which has always been strong, my sense of narrative, my sense of writing, my relationships with writers, my ability to talk to writers.

"I'm not bringing a lot of other things from Vanity Fair - the whole kind of spin and visual excitement and so forth that will not be appropriate to The New Yorker."

She cited such Vanity Fair offerings as novelist William Styron's harrowing account of his bout with depression and Norman Mailer's essays as "the kinds of pieces that would work in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. And there are many others pieces that wouldn't. . . And I'm very much aware of the difference."

The New Yorker's circulation has grown from around 500,000 copies when Newhouse acquired the monthly in 1985 to 627,000. Ad pages totaled an impressive 2,000 last year, but this was down 19 percent from 1990. Steve Florio, the magazine's president, disputes widespread rumors the magazineis losing millions.

Brown, who resurrected Vanity Fair from near-extinction after joining the magazine in 1984, was asked if she is coming to the New Yorker during its own time of crisis.

"Well, I think, obviously, any change (in editors) is because there is a sense that the change is necessary."