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Business

Portfolio closes after failing to get in vogue

Nick Goodway
28 Apr 2009


Portfolio, the glossy Condé Nast magazine which was supposed to be the Vogue or Vanity Fair of the business world, has shut.

The $100 million (£69 million) launch money, believed to be the most spent on a new magazine, has run out only two years after it hit the news stands of Wall Street.

The magazine mistimed its entry into the market, hitting the worst downturn in financial markets for more than 50 years. In the last three months advertising revenues slumped by more than 60%.

Editor Joanne Lipman and another 85 staff have been laid off.

David Carey, Condé Nast's publisher of Portfolio, said: “We believed in the editorial concept and still do. The problem in terms of the ad franchise was the timing turned out to be terrible, launching right into the teeth of a very deep recession.”

But critics said the magazine could not survive in a financial news sector where stories break in seconds rather than the many weeks it takes to publish a monthly title.

Circulation was down below 450,000 in the second half of 2008 many of those being free and it went from being monthly to 10 times a year.

Condé Nast has shut down many of its recent magazines including the German edition of Vanity Fair and US lifstyle magazine Domino.

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