Just catching up on a little Grim Reaper bookkeeping... We hereby add Condé Nast's Portfolio to our list of deceased magazines.
The closing of the two-year-old business glossy and its Web site was announced late last month. Portfolio was the victim of the same severe advertising downturn that has been threatening the entire industry—as well as, perhaps, a touch of mega-media-company hubris. David Carr of the New York Times reported:
Most of the $100 million pledged toward the start-up is gone, sunk into the very expensive printing, paper, marketing and editorial costs that go with creating a magazine, especially one published by Condé Nast.
Carr also noted that Portfolio apparently kept to its extravagant ways until near the very end. To dress up a November 2008 story about JP Morgan Chase entitled "The $58 Trillion Elephant in the Room," the magazine hired a real elephant for the photo shoot. Cost: $30,000.
Jon Fine at BusinessWeek.com posted a thoughtful postmortem.
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