It’s here…
The most awaited business magazine launch in some time is arriving at newsstands today. Enter Portfolio, Conde Nast’s glossy, monthly business magazine that has the audacity to promise us something new in a very old medium.
Editor Joanne Lipman writes in her inaugural Editor’s Letter:
Business is about power. And guts. And passion. Business coverage should be too.
Welcome to the first issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, a monthly magazine that chronicles how business shapes the world—and who the players are that wield the power. You don’t have to wear a suit or sit behind a desk to love the intrigue or be fascinated by the winners and losers. We see the business angle in every story, from politics to art, technology to entertainment.
Portfolio is of interest for one important reason: The well-documented decline of print media in our Web 2.0-enabled world. While there are many, well-established business titles out there, Conde Nast is promising to do something different in an environment where “different” could make all the difference.
Some of the big magazines remain troubled: ad pages for the first three months of this year were down for BusinessWeek (3 percent), Forbes (9 percent) and Fortune (13 percent), compared with the same period a year ago, according to Publishers Information Bureau. Circulation at the big three has been flat or falling for the last few years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
But Portfolio would not be the first business magazine introduced during trying times. Henry Luce founded Fortune just months after the Wall Street crash of 1929, for example.
S. I. Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast, said in an interview that he had no patience with Portfolio skeptics.
“Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead,†he said. “I don’t think we’re going to trample on Forbes or Fortune. I think we’re going to help the whole field. We’re going to bring excitement to it, and we’re going to bring luxury and fashion advertisers into it.â€
So, will Portfolio thrive or fall flat? It’s way too early to tell. The inaugural issue boasts big-time writers like Tom Wolfe. And while a monthly, the magazine offers a Portfolio.com website designed to keep readers engaged with breaking news, blogs and other content. It’s even gone Web 2.0 … with a “BETA” label posted prominently at the top of the site.
In all, it’s worth keeping an eye on Portfolio — if for no other reason than to gauge the ability of fresh new magazines to make it. For business communicators, Portfolio also has the potential to become an exciting new outlet that will need interesting stories writers can really sink their teeth into.
Technorati Tags: portfolio, magazine, conde nast, journalism
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Here’s a not-so-positive review of the magazine’s inaugural issue from The New York Observer.
For example, it says:
Let’s see what future issues have in store…