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Conde Nast
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'Teen Vogue' Intern Search: No Dorks, Fatties
Attention, thin children! Teen Vogue contest alert! You now have the chance to be an intern for a choice three weeks in July, when all the important editors are in the Hamptons! Although maybe you'd be able to rub shoulders with a couple of reality television celebrities. Imagine the sexy possibilities. To apply, you just have to go through a couple easy steps.
Patrick Dempsey Shills For Conde Nast
Conde Nast is rolling out its celeb-studded print ads, in a campaign called "Point of Passion." It's this nifty thing where people who might be in the magazines are shilling for the magazines! So you have Mary-Louise Parker posing for the New Yorker, and Patrick Dempsey working it for Details, and Richard Branson hawking Wired, and Diane von Furstenberg clutching Vanity Fair, and, naturally, Stanley Tucci caressing Gourmet. See, if famous people like magazines, well, then clearly you will enjoy them and buy them too! We thought we'd make some revisions—you know, to aim for that youthful demo that Conde is opting out on.
Is 'Portfolio' Selling Like Its Hype?
Porfolio has been on New York newsstands since April 16, and national newsstands since April 24. Which means it's not too early to ask: How's it selling?
The plan for Portfolio is 200,000 copies sold at the newsstand this year, according to a source at a competing publication (grain of salt taken!). This person also tells us that the first issue has, so far, sold 30,000 copies—although "these are like early returns in an election. The number could change." So 30K for this issue, when the next issue is due in August and monthly thereafter, according to the Times, might conceivably hit 200K. This source describes the situation this way: "I hear that Portfolio—given all the hype and hoopla—pretty much bombed at newsstand. Of course, when we all saw the issue we figured it would be weak, since it isn't newsstand tweaked AT ALL—like, say, the New Yorker—so obviously it's too early to declare victory. But Portfolio has got to be going into a major rethink."
Condé Nastie Leo Lerman Glitters, Even In Death
It was said that in order to host a book party last night, the painter Gray Foy had to remove approximately 700 objets from the sprawling apartment on the sixth floor of the Osborne, on West 57th Street, that he had shared for 27 years with the longtime Condé Nast writer and editor Leo Lerman, who died in 1994. Yet every conceivable surface—tables, shelves, walls—was covered with trinkets and statuettes, photographs and paintings and drawings, candelabras and candlesticks, miniature fake pastries arranged around a samovar, Tiffany lamps, framed butterflies and other insects, books, "good Russian silverware," gnomes, decorative boxes, and in one of the three bedrooms, a now-empty hornet's nest, hanging delicately on the corner of a large mirror.
Photos by Nikola Tamindzic.
Oprah Cancels Presidential Election
Conde Nast Enjoys Forced Child Labor Day
It's Take Your Kids to Work Day, and nowhere is that tradition better observed than at 4 Times Square. Today every limb on the Conde Nast tree had to prepare some sort of activity for the children, which meant, for example, ice cream sundaes at Bon Appétit and creating Flip books at Flip.com. (Anything for page views!) Anyway, one Nastie snipes, "It's so crazy that all of these editors have to spend time preparing for kids to come through," as they're trying to do things, like, you know, close issues? And Anna Wintour was spotted escaping from the nightmare via Town Car this afternoon, accompanied by two older men—with nary a sign of her Charles or Bee. Our gay on the scene reports: "She was holding her sunglasses. I yelled 'I love you Anna!' She actually smiled and waved. One of the men said, 'Ah your adoring fans.'" Maybe she had the visiting children clean out the fashion closet? No Red Bull being passed out this year, though.
Media Bubble: Everything's Gone Green
'Portfolio' Ad: The Call Is Coming From Outside The House!
In our mad dash to absorb the entirety of the first issue of Portfolio, we missed more than a few things (this is the case with most of our "analysis"). Most glaringly, we missed something about this Microsoft ad, which starts on page 104 and continues on pages 106-107. The building looks awfully familiar. It might even be here in town. Wait, wait, it's coming to us...
The Other 'Portfolio'
We can understand how, in the manic rush to deliver your premier issue to a waiting public and get your website up to snuff, certain details can be overlooked. Still, shouldn't someone at Conde Nast thought to have spent $7.95 from their $125 million endowment to snap up portfoliomag.com? Because this does not exactly scream "business lifestyle." On the other hand, the Tom Wolfe essay on toe-sucking is well worth reading.
Media Bubble: Air Imus
S.I. Newhouse: "Don't Tell Anyone How Awesome I Think 'Portfolio' Is"
The Observer brings word of an e-mail sent by Conde Nast supremo S.I. Newhouse to Portfolio EIC Joanne Lipman in praise of the publication's first issue. They also note that "a second S.I. love letter was read by Lipman at last night's staff party." The first memo is here, the second follows.
We Read 'Portfolio' So You Don't Have To
Let us begin with the cover of Portfolio. It's a gilded city image, a metropolis of lit-up office windows in earth tones, oddly, as it is supposed to be an homage to Berenice Abbott. (A funny reference, as she was told that New York City was too toxic for her to live in and so she left.) Publisher David Carey and Editor in Chief Joanne Lipman are shown in the Times this morning comparing their cover favorably to a recent Fortune cover, with Carey saying, "We're not giving you peas and carrots. We want to capture that glamour." By that measure things are certainly already a success; the magazine certainly weighs as much as Glamour.
Conde Newsstand Nearly Out Of 'Portfolio'!
From inside the 4 Times Square mothership: "ONLY TWO COPIES OF PORTFOLIO LEFT AT CONDE NEWSSTAND." Apparently the supply is so low, they're hoarding copies of Portfolio, America's most highly self-regarded business magazine, behind the register. This does not surprise—where else would a magazine devoted to studies of the signs and signifiers of wealth perform so well?
Eventually All We Will Be Writing About Is 'Portfolio'
As you might have heard, Conde Nast's Portfolio launches today. The most important business magazine of its generation, Portfolio starts life with 185 ad pages in a 332-page issue. Condé chair Si Newhouse says the book was "inspired by a positive response to business articles in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, although he could not recall precisely which ones." (We have the same problem!) Conde 's willing to dump around $125 million into making the mag a success, but some see the publication as a shot across Time Inc.'s bow. In any event, it's the little things that make the difference. Like the pillows in the "idea lab."
Your 'Portfolio' Has Finally Arrived
After years of anxious anticipation, the debut issue of Portfolio, Conde Nast's new entry into the crowded biz mag field, has hit the stands. We'll have more—much more—on this important launch later, but if the premiere issue's centerfold is anything to go by, Business Week, Fortune and Forbes should definitely be soiling their collective trousers.
Flip.com Working Furiously To Avoid Total Failure
Conde Nast's Flip has a new plan to get teenage girls to visit the site and make some pretty Flipbooks: bribe them! Between now and May 31, anyone signing up on the site will be automatically entered to win a $25,000 college scholarship. Not only that, but the site will also be giving away a laptop computer each week,. Sadly, there's a catch: "To win a laptop, girls must create one or more Flipbooks on the Flip Web site. The more Flipbooks created by each member, the greater their chances are of winning during one of the weekly prize drawings." Get cracking, so Flip doesn't fail! We're also enjoying the way that Flip describes itself in the press release that went out today.
Media Bubble: Stalkers, Belchers, Etc.
Media Bubble: The Onion Will Kill Tucker Carlson
