Condé Nast is ceasing publication of Portfolio, the glossy business magazine (and 2008 National Magazine Award winner).
A brief post from Jeff Bercovici, of Portfolio‘s Mixed Media blog.
Jon Fine at Businessweek.com on “Why It Failed:”
[A] neat notion doesn’t always translate into the marketplace. Portfolio’s editorial product was regularly run through the media-on-media spanking machine, but, while inconsistent, it had more to offer readers than it was commonly given credit for. The problem is that neither readers nor advertisers responded.
And, Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman wonders “who’s next:”
Portfolio, a good magazine, shouldn’t be viewed as a cautionary tale. It was a victim of hype at the outset and the recession at the end.
Get used to this gloom and doom, folks — you will be seeing this story again, the next time a business magazine folds.
In March 2008, Portfolio‘s editor, Joanne Lipman, spoke at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism on “the role of the business glossy.”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.