Conde Nast is shutting down its glossy business magazine Portfolio, two years after its launch. Conde Nast famously poured $100 million to launch the publication, which went on an expensive hiring spree in 2007 in its attempt to take on Fortune, Forbes, and Business Week. The magazine always seemed to me to have an unhealthy fixation with Wall Street and the hedge fund boom over other industries, but as Wall Street cratered nobody wanted to read those stories anymore. The drop in print advertising, down 26 percent in the first quarter, didn’t help matters either.
Portfolio saw itself in the same vein as the Fortune magazine of the 1930s, filled with lush photographs and long narratives. But that formula doesn’t work in an age where business is about speed, not leisure or luxury. It also doesn’t work in an age where monthly magazines in general are increasingly challenged by the wealth of instantaneous business news available on the Web. (And you thought the daily newspapers had it tough). Portfolio’s insistence on favoring its print over its Website content also helped to hasten its demise. If you are going to start a magazine these days, the Website has to come first. The magazine companies still don’t realize this simple fact.
Finally, there will always linger the question of leadership. The magazine’s editor Joanne Lippman alienated and drove away much of her star staff. I know people who used to work there, and the stories I always heard were ones of disarray, which is to be expected at any startup, even one with $100 million in corporate backing.
Did anyone here even read Portfolio magazine. Does anyone here even read magazines? Oh well, another one for the deadpool.
(Disclosure: I used to work at Fortune a long time ago).
The last copy had Sarah Palin on the cover…so i didn’t even both to open it
Yes in fact, let Mrs. Palin become the face of this magazine’s readership death.
Take me for example: I canceled my subscription to WIRED 3 years ago after I detected its editors and writers framed their stories around a political bias. For example, in WIRED’s frequent coverage of “Global Warming”, its editors would just completely ignore any debate! Climate cycles are made cooler and hotter by man, they presumed, and proceed with hot and bothered story on this ridiculous and flowed assumption.
How frustrating! Does Conde Nast think I’m going to just sit there and PAY them to frustrate me and waste my time?
For these newspapers and magazines, like Portfolio, which STUBBORNLY refuse to balance their coverage of hot topics, it is only a matter of time.
Silly Wired. Its the cows! Not man.
More the property rents go down better it is.
You are right… the acid rain in Pittsburgh in the 70’s was wonderful. Maybe they can turn on the old steel mills and bring it back.
I love the magazine. Unfortunate – its one of the only magazines I regularly read.
Actually folks, the latest issue has Tim Geitner on it. Palin was last month.
I liked Portfolio and I LOVE magazines. Sad to see it go.
I intermittently thought about getting going on the print version, but never did, and only read bits and pieces online. As I never seem to get to the print pubs which I currently receive, Portfolio was intriguing but it was a clear choice NOT to subscribe.
With Sarah Palin on the cover I didn’t even bother to buy it, much less open it. A serious business magazine with her on the cover?
Yes, I do read magazines. On paper. But it has to be worth the cover price. Portfolio wasn’t.
yeah, who wants to read something with somebody whose political views I don’t share on the cover? Maybe Time magazine is having the same trouble considering Obama has graced its cover 13 times the past year…
actually, the Palin cover story tore her to pieces. It was all about how much she sucks and the fact that she is incapable of even basic listening. If you think Palin might be an uber sheisty politician, this wouold have been a fun article to check out.
and to think at one time I was pitching them to allow me to pot the http://www.worstpizza.com reviews there! That would have been an absolute waste!
too many financial reporters, not enough quality actionable financial reporting
Too much focus on Wall Street vs. Main Street which is why things spiraled out of control. Thanks for trying………..
I have (had?) a current subscription only because I was looking for business magazines to suppliment my tech reading and it was cheap (like $12). I subscribe to 2 other magazines (Inc & Fast Company) and ended up with a year’s worth of unread Portfolios stacked in a bookshelf.
After speed-reading the stack, it seems I wasted $12.
I have a subscription that I received for free from some sort of promotional deal. Last Friday (as in three days ago) I received a notice from them offering to extend my subscription for two years for $15. Glad I didn’t bite or they probably would have switched me to Vogue or something.
Wired is the only print magazine I read. Isn’t much else out there worth paying for in print, in my opinion. Maybe Pop-Sci? Portfolio was a joke from the start. Almost as big of a joke as Lenny Dykstra’s The Players Club title.
Oh no! I just subscribed to this magazine about a month ago. Dirt cheap for a one-year sub like all the rest. Guess I should keep my divining skills away from the stock market right now to be safe.
What I liked about it was everything Erick notes…its glossy nature…the longer, in-depth articles that are good for plane rides and lazy weekends.
I realize I may be a minority voice here, but I still enjoy reading magazines quite a bit. I spend all day long looking at a computer screen so I’m a bit giddy to be able to leave the digital world on the screen at nights and on weekends. Entrepreneur, Inc, Fast Company, Wired, Details, etc….I’m still a fan.
I also enjoyed the longer in depth articles and the glossy timeless nature of the photography. I have the net for fast and uncluttered information gathering. Reading portfolio was like taking a mini vacation. It provided thought provoking relaxation and in depth and interesting stories. The business of the Mexican drug wars and their connection to American gun trade, that poor guy who was tasked with cleaning up the finances of a fundamentalist Mormon community, etc…. These are why I read portfolio. And seriously guys, they really did tear palin apart. Should have read the story…
The last issue – May 2009 – arrived in the mail today and has Timothy Geithner on the cover with this ironic headline – “Lead Us. Please. What we need from Geithner and Wall Street”
I guess somewhere inside, Conde Nast asks Geithner for a bailout and their $100 million back.
Portfolio was about the lifestyle and glamor of business rather than core business. They fired the web people before the end of 2008 so it was only time until it would shutdown completely.
This is a new magazine so its not a big story, they come and go. The story here is the problems of established magazines that may fold in the near future. Who will it be?
Contrary to what’s stated, a story in Business Week on the shuttering of Portfolio claims that initially they spent WAY TOO MUCH on its website:
http://www.busi...ws+%2B+analysis
From the story: “It launched a Web site so ambitious that, as one company insider familiar with the details put it, the cost of launching Portfolio.com alone far exceeded the cost of most print magazine launches.”
They went all out in the beginning. That is true. But even then they doled out their magazine stories piecemeal even after the issue had hit the newsstands. Then they just gutted the Website altogether.
Since when is it so expensive to launch a website? It’s not 1997. These people had it all wrong from the beginning.
I always really enjoyed the articles in Portfolio but it still can’t hold a candle to Fast Company, which somehow manages to still be really good.
That is because Bob Safian and Will Bourne, the top editors there and also former Fortune colleagues, are working miracles.
Another inane and misinformed article by our friends at TC.
The Financial Times is a business newspaper targeting the same audience and competing in the same nebulous “wired world” Schonfeld so describes.
So why is the FT succeeding and Portfolio floundering? I don’t think Al Jazeera english had $100 million when they started and their cost base is arguably far higher. What in the world did they do with that money?
Every news story about print publishing failure typically ignores reasons for demise. TC and their ilk love to stand on their high horse “Twitter this, and instantaneous business news that”.
Truth is, Portfolio magazine exemplified every wrong with our culture of money perverse interests and invited guest writer telling us what a great buy Citigroup is at $23 in July of 2008. The idiots who believed in the cult of the over-achieving Bernie Madoff were charged with writing personal investment articles.
The more important question is what in the world did they do with $100 million?
money is better distributed at a loss than hoarded as a gain.
VentureLocator.com – afford to lose
SpamLocator.com – locate bullshite spammer from Ning.
i’ve said it before, and i’ve said it again…all TC has to do is ban the world locator from comments and this guys head will explode
“…an unhealthy fixation with Wall Street and the hedge fund boom…”
What would TC know about an unhealthy fixation? I would bet every TC reader knows yours?
@Paul O – I didn’t ever go their website but I know they built a huge business directory linking to a lot of businesses and individuals. I stumbled onto their directory which didn’t make much sense to me then or now.
Google is showing Portfolio.com has 3,630,000 pages in its site while Compete.com shows monthly unique visitors below 1 million a month.
What will happen to the website portfolio.com?
I used to work for Advance Internet, the company that is apart of Conde Nast traveler, GQ magazine, NJ.com, SILive.com and so forth. Sad to see they are suffering financially, like I and the rest of us. Was laid off last year from Advance, but they are still a good company to work for. It’s just that everybody is having problems with xXx $ gUaP $ xXx for now
Oh No, this was my favorite Biz Magazine!
ha ha condemast..what a joke..$100 million down the toilet. The future is web 2.0; not magazines. The recession is over. long live facebook and twitter http://iamned.com/blog/ keep buying the dips
is it a sexual magazine? i needs it
this was by far one of the best business magazines that I subscribed to..I had an annual subscription to it (only $12/yea) and I thought the content and quality of the articles were good to justify the cost.
now what other good business magazines are out there?
All I can say is “Flussshhhhhhh” ..
I love lamp
Exactly why Business 2.0 should have never been canned. Moreover, the drastic changes after being bought (changes that took place under the helm of Editor-in-Chief Josh Quittner) should have not happened either. B2.0 was a great magazine that would do very well in these times. Too bad it went down.
In answer to the question posed, yes, I actually did have a subscription to Portfolio.
But as many have noted, it was behind the curve for timely information and was rife with outdated strategies.
Business is just changing too quickly for a media company to rely solely on print media.
What is funny to me, only because I didn’t renew, was that as late as last week I was receiving special renewal offers in the mail. Now there would be a case of throwing good money after bad.
I think Portfolio is a great magazine – their stories are interesting and well-written. Too bad that it’s going down.
For those people who complained about the Sarah Palin cover, if you had actually read the headline or even taken a glance at the article you’d realize that it portrays her very negatively.
CondeNast’ model is to launch high-quality titles in targeted niches where premium ad revenue is possible with a significant committed investment, but if it doesn’t take root shutter it and launch in another area…acc. to some former magazine colleagues, so the shutdown is consistent with that
very well written article
lol this is the funniest story of the day
I really really enjoyed this magazine, along with Wired and Vanity Fair it was a must subscribe for me after reading just a few issues of it.
It was literally my replacement for Business 2.0, can my favourite magazines please stop being shut down…
Yes I did read it and I found it interesting. A bit left-of-center bias, but that was OK. Of course for real quality reporting and insight I like to read the reader comments in TC. Which I suppose is the point of having Web 2.0.
I still read Fast Company, everything else is online.
Portfolio is/was actually a pretty good read.
I made a personal case study of Conde Naste properties and Portfolio in particular over the past year. Their online presence is incredibly weak even with great websites that have great content. Great content alone is not enough to get traffic. They flubbed their SEO and that’s why my network along with many others are killing these guys by a thousand cuts, even though we can’t afford to produce content at their level of quality. We will over time though. Even after 10 years of a highly commercial net, they still don’t understand it. Their pain = my gain.
it was good reading…
specially mobile version on a toilet. quick and easy to crunch some new info on business.
now i am left with wired and fast company only
I thumbed through a few issues at the newsstand. While there were a few interesting articles, I could detect a generous dose of ‘rich liberal guilt’ in the
tenor of the writing.
No thanks…
this demise is part of an inevitable trend…
today i launched a site that hopefully will really take off..a business associate of mine said – this is some great content here – r u sure u dont want to launch a sister magazine???
of course im fucking sure – print is dead…i cant remember the last time i bought a newspaper, but i do remember at one stage of my life i would buy every weekend paper i could get my hands on….
why bother anymore? websites can be updated in real time, there is no need for distribution logistics and the info is free…
once upon a time the fastest way to send info out was by tieing a letter to a pigeon……
its time to put the paper publication pigeons to pasture
Portfolio had some beautiful stories which can’t be replaced by besserwisser-blog commentaries!
I actually do subscribe and read “Portfolio” – it’s one of my favorite magazines. It covers a more diverse spectrum of topics compared to Fortune and Forbes. I’m sad to hear that it’s shutting down.
We recognised that a strong online presence is necessary for new magazines to survive. That is why we launched our website http://completewellbeing.com alongside the launch of our magazine Complete Wellbeing. Besides, we also took care to have an offering that is unique from what is easily and freely available on the web and in other print formats.
The demise of Portfolio only goes to show that merely big money and big publishers can’t ensure success.