Portfolio magazine, Condé Nast’s big business magazine, closed down today. Because it’s Condé Nast and because it was all about big money, people keep talking up the purported $100 million (or is that $150 million?) that was spent on this mag for fewer than two years of existence.
Anyway, everybody’s got some sort of post-mortem about it: Daniel Gross, Jon Fine, Megan McArdle, a former staffer. My two cents: they were stupid to launch a mass-market publication about unphotogenic finance wonks at a time when print is dying. I don’t think Condé likes the internet, because ads for luxury brands don’t look good on a computer screen, so they were stuck trying to sell luxury companies big money ads in a recession.
Maybe they’ll finally come around and support my magazine about comic books, basketball, and gin, especially since I don’t need $100 million to launch it. I could probably get by with $30 or $40 million.
