Matt Yglesias

22 Responses to “Portfolio Closing”

1. James Gary Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

   That really sucks. I am (I guess, now I was) a Portfolio subscriber. It was a solid magazine and I enjoyed reading it.

2. Gene O'Grady Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

   I suppose we should feel better because they also shut down Golf for Women (nothing against women, not too much against golf except some golfers and all of them were men).

   There should be a contest for most missed shut down magazines; I would nominate the much-loved (in a very small corner of the world) Biblio, perhaps secure in the knowledge that no one else has ever heard of it.

3. Ginger Yellow Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

   It’s a pretty crappily run publishing company that hires people days (or in practice weeks) before shutting down their publication. And it’s a really terrible thing to do to a person.

4. James Gary Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

   There should be a contest for most missed shut down magazines…

   What I miss most is the state of magazine publishing in, say, 1995, when the general focus was much more on “providing interesting content for readers” than “acting as a platform for advertising.” The industry’s been killing itself for awhile now— the Internet is just helping the process along.

5. El Cid Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

   I read that the magazine had lost $100 million in 2 years. I thought it was, yes, a fancy magazine, but $50 million / year? Is that a typical budget for a magazine?

6. James Gary Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   I read that the magazine had lost $100 million in 2 years.

   I read that too. I don’t have time to dig, but my feeling is that number can’t possibly be correct.

7. bdbd Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   goodness. I think my subscription runs into the next century. Why didn’t I pick up some Portfolio CDS contracts while they were available??!!

8. M Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

   Nice of Conde Nast to play it straight with new hire Avent.

9. Armando Says:
   April 27th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

   Avent is excellent. I hear American Prospect has an opening.

10. John Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Wow, that is seriously lame – what kind of company hires somebody weeks before shutting down? That’s just totally ridiculous.

11. JH Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Indeed, if that’s not lawsuit worthy, then it should be.

12. bh Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    That’s really too bad. I though [i]Portfolio[/i] was, on average, a lot more interesting than its competitors, and it’s depressing that they couldn’t find a niche.

    A lot of what CNBC is being (rightly) ridiculed for right now really applies to the business press in general. It’s the same crap — Lives of the Saints-style CEO profiles, Club for Growth-esque ‘political coverage’, barely rehashed corporate press releases — but in print instead of on the TV.

    [i]Portfolio[/i] wasn’t perfect, but they at least seemed to be aiming for journalism rather than expressions of upper-class solidarity.

13. Steve LaBonne Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Wow, that is seriously lame – what kind of company hires somebody weeks before shutting down? That’s just totally ridiculous.

    Well, anybody who isn’t suffering from some mental disability, such as being a Republican, has been aware for a long time that “corporate ethics” is an oxymoron.

14. James Gary Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Wow, that is seriously lame – what kind of company hires somebody weeks before shutting down? That’s just totally ridiculous.

    It might seem sort of weird to those who don’t work in media, but in my experience that sort of thing isn’t tremendously unusual. An arbitrary decision is made on high one day, and the whole landscape changes abruptly without respect for its inhabitants.

15. Will Allen Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    This just in: organizations that are losing mountains of money tend to be quite dysfunctional, and do things like, for just one example, spend significant sums of money to recruit and hire people right up to the time they lock the doors. This is a good reason to spend a good deal of energy investigating the profitability of a company before accepting a job offer, while understanding that any promise made by a organization which is losing a ton of money should be taken with boulder-sized grains of salt.

    Now, perhaps Avent was aware of this and decided to take the chance anyways. Maybe the people who hired Avent lied their asses off when they interviewed him, regarding how well the magazine was doing; does Conde Nast break out their individual publication’s results in their annual reports? Either way, it sucks when stuff like this happens, but it is one good reason why it is usually better to be hired by people who are making money, and one reason why some people prefer self employment. When you aren’t part of a large organization filled with human beings, you usually have far fewer human beings taking up your day with their self-serving lies. Firing individual customers that you discover you don’t like is a lot easier than firing employers that you discover you don’t like.

16. Will Allen Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    Anyone not suffering from a mental disability, such as being a Democrat, understands that any large organization of human beings, be it a corporation, church, government agency, non-profit, etc., has a non-trivial percentage of knaves, jackals, and flat-out crooks appearing on it’s organizational chart, and thus prefers whenever possible organizations which outsiders can choose to disassociate from completely, or to a very large degree, if the outsider so chooses.

17. Steve LaBonne Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    I would think someone named “Will Allen” would speak English as his native language, but just in case I’ll refrain from commenting unkindly on that mess of meaningless verbiage.

18. David B. Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    The best I can tell, Will Allen is saying Democrats do not suffer from mental disabilities? I’m sympathetic, but think that overstates it a little.

    Anyway, the times I’ve looked at Portfolio, it seemed pretty good. The theory was that business think-pieces in NY’er and VF got good attention, so maybe both of those magazines will beef up their financial reporting, since Conde Nast evidently has the reporting capacity still.

19. thomasblair Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    Steve Labonne,

    I understood him just fine. He’s saying non-retards prefer to deal with organizations that people can voluntarily (dis)associate with.

20. vanya Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 7:23 pm

    There should be a contest for most missed shut down magazines

    I nominate Mangajin. There really was nothing else like it. Omni had its moments.

21. vanya Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Will is actually right that it is very common for troubled organizations, and not just in publishing, to keep hiring people right up until they decide to file bankruptcy or even liquidate. Most hiring decisions are made at a level well below the board level. Sometimes senior executives of distressed companies have the foresight to institute hiring freezes but more often than not the executives are in complete denial until the last possible moment about how screwed up their organization is, and don’t want to send “the wrong signals.”

22. Brad Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 7:39 am

    With the Avent hiring, I am guessing the following:

    A) Business Decision from above may have been a snap decision made after the Avent hiring.

    B) Sometimes, in an effort to maintain the secrecy of a business decision, you do not begin to make decision such as hiring freezes, especially when it comes to media companies. If for example, a hiring freeze were to go into effect, if anything, it would potentially dampen demand for advertising even more, because once word was out that Portfolio was in danger, it would be a disincentive for anyone committing ad dollars to Portfolio.

    C) As a subscriber, I am a little upset. But I am mostly sad because this seemed like the one business magazine that looked at business not as some cheerleader for industry (i.e. – Business Porn) and more looked into the back stories underlying the glossy press releases and public relations dreck.