Awesome! So says Tina Brown, in an “interview” her site is running with her today, to mark the Beast’s two-year anniversary: five million uniques, “ahead of projections” on advertising, etc. “A romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health.” (No mention of Howard Kurtz, though.)

In fact, it’s doing so great, Brown says, that Diller may end up pawning the thing off to Newsweek and new owner Sidney Harman.

Well, she doesn’t say that exactly. But she does acknowledge, out loud, for the first time, that the two sides are chatting:

We hear something is going on with Newsweek.

How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.

Cheeky!

Here’s a more fleshed-out version of that discussion, via the NYT:

Mr. Harman and Ms. Brown met as recently as last week and are keen on working together. But whether The Daily Beast, which is financed by the billionaire investor Barry Diller, and Mr. Harman can reach a deal that is agreeable to all parties is still unknown, this person said, speaking anonymously to reveal privileged information.

Ms. Brown has gone as far as submitting a memorandum to Mr. Harman outlining how she would run Newsweek, but Mr. Harman was also interviewing other people for the job, this person added.

A few things:

• It’s astonishing, and also true, that Harman bought Newsweek from the Washington Post (WPO) without knowing who he would hire to run the operation.
• This also means that no one is really running things there now.
• Brown would be a pretty good choice, all things considered.
• And picking up the Beast wouldn’t be a terrible idea for Harman, assuming Diller can do it at the right price: Newsweek’s Web operations are okay, but not nearly as good as they look on paper. That’s because the site is largely dependent on MSNBC.com for its traffic, and that’s not a healthy affair. Say what you will about Brown’s start-up, but it hasn’t had the crutch of a big distribution partner.

The twist is that while Peter Lauria is leaving his gig at the New York Post where he covered media moguls, he’s staying in the business. He’s moving across town to The Daily Beast, where he’ll become a senior correspondent with the same beat.

There are two big differences here. Instead of working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWS)–which also owns this Web site–Lauria will be working for Barry Diller, via his IAC (IACI) conglomerate. The more important change is that he’ll have the ability to publish more than once a day, which the Post has been loath to do on its Web site (which makes no sense).

Asked for comment about the move, Daily Beast Managing Editor Edward Felsenthal sent me a link to this item from the Post’s Page Six gossip section:

Harvey Weinstein doesn’t like everything written about him in The Post. Peter Lauria, who covers media for our business section, has gotten under the movie mogul’s delicate skin. When a reporter for another publication mentioned “Inglourious Basterds,” the hit replenishing the Weinstein Co. coffers, Harvey joked, “Peter Lauria. He’s the inspiration for ‘Inglourious Basterds’…we were thinking who were the bastards that we know, and he was the No. 1 bastard.”

High praise!