Will Condé Nast close Portfolio? Magazines stay troubled
The oncoming advertising recession looks likely to knock one business media source out early. A source has told Cityfile New York that Condé Nast, one of the nation’s biggest magazine publishers, may soon fold Portfolio, its still youthful business glossy.
More problematic than anything is Portfolio’s monthly format. During a financial crisis, readers want information that’s fresh that day — if possible, fresh that hour or even minute. Magazines are lagging badly, with banks collapsing and new crises arising during a single publishing cycle. As Cityfile points out, Portfolio was still examining Citi’s survival prospects while Washington Mutual and others were folding.
But Portfolio’s existence has seemed tenous since its beginning. When I was still at Business 2.0, before that magazine closed its doors, the staff passed around the May 2007 first issue of Portfolio with a certain morbid amusement. Our publication was headed for its grave, and most other business rags were struggling, but Condé Nast had decided to stick its neck out with a thick, glossy-paged monthly full of beautiful photography and insidery puff pieces about famous executives. Some called it painfully bad.
The reality disconnect seemed almost palpable, but there was also an edge of uncertainty: Maybe they were really onto something. After all, around half of those 335 pages were advertisements for various high-end goods and services.
Today, it seems that even new media publications (like us) are having to buckle down and worry about whether their advertising budget will remain stable. Portfolio, for its part, is giving away 22 percent of its issues, and only sells 15 percent of those placed on newsstands.
And for those who might suggest that magazines are only troubled because they’re run by stodgy old companies, here’s one snippet of news that apparently went unreported: 8020 Media, the startup that publishes user-generated titles, recently gave up on Everywhere, a magazine dedicated to travel photography and stories. It’s a hard business, and more magazine deaths may be on the horizon.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.