The Reviews
six months later: One can clearly recognize both the time-honored religious icon and the new-fangled cultural icon. For icons, it seems, are most easily identifiable not when they perform miracles, but when they burst into flames.” Bidoun is bent on igniting icons everywhere and, through its iconoclasm, asks readers to reconsider on what pillars they have placed their own beliefs. Condé Nast Portfolio Circulation: 425,000 Date of Birth: 2007 Frequency: 10 issues per year Price: $4.99 Natural Habitat: Next to a shelf of leather-bound books, in an apartment that smells of rich mahogany
By Tim Loh When Condé Nast Portfolio first hit newsstands in April 2007, the old guard of business magazines was up in arms. It was bad enough that they had been suffering from plummeting ad revenues and losing readers to the Web, but here was this latecomer with a reported $100-125 million in its back pocket, poaching on their turf and spreading a new idea about the business of covering business: specifically, that what the ever faster-paced business world needed was an outlet for first-class feature writing fused with digested, mulled-over thought. On that lofty platform, Portfolio launched itself as a monthly, with “Business Intelligence” as its subtitle. (The gall!) Whether there’s actually a market for business monthlies, or if Portfolio is living up to its ambitions, remains open for debate. But the editors have succeeded in making an entertaining product. Portfolio targets an early-middle-aged crowd, slightly male-dominated, with about a third of its readers in upper management. Although reading it probably won’t make you rich, if you aren’t already, spending enough time thumbing through the pages will start giving you the impression that you are. That’s because, even in the midst of the greatest economic turmoil since the Great Depression, Portfolio has a way of making everything seem A-OK. It all starts with the extra-glossy pages and grows on you with the elegant photographs. But the crowning touch comes in the long articles, which, although highly readable, overindulge in the glamorous
(though sometimes crumbling) lives of the wealthy and powerful business elite. Of the two main articles in the February 2009 issue, for example, the first profiles the sputtering career of Sumner Redstone, the 85-yearold chairman of Viacom and CBS, whose obstinacy in the face of his downfall they likened to King Lear’s. The second profiled a hedgefund manager (“Brilliant or Evil?” they ask) who made $3 billion “betting against you” during the Wall Street meltdown. The next four pages give a tongue-in-cheek analysis of whether Goldman Sachs has been “conspiring” to take over the US financial system. Along similar lines, March’s cover story traces the Hollywood fallout from the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. These are newsworthy events, of course, but what about the unemployment rate hitting its highest point since the early 1980s? Oh, Business Intelligence, are you listening? You are entertaining, I grant, but of the zeitgeist? I’m not so sure. At its best, Portfolio will produce a piece like Michael Lewis’ December/January cover story, “The End.” The article, nearly 10,000 words long, exposes and explains the forces that led to the Wall Street meltdown. Lewis drives the narrative through a handful of investors, chief among them a hedgefund manager named Steve Eisman, who scratch the surface of the subprime credit mess early on but only gradually come to see the magnitude of the problem, an arc deftly conveyed by their increasing shock. The reader, in turn, experiences that most satisfying of literary sensations: fully losing himself in a story that profoundly betters his understanding of a complex topic. That, and a healthy dose of indignation, of course. The past two years have been difficult for everyone in the print industry, and Portfolio is no exception. Its circulation grew more slowly than expected, reaching only 450,000 (Forbes, Fortune, and BusinessWeek each nearly double that). This past fall, as Condé Nast axed a handful of magazines from its roster, the company reduced Portfolio from 12 issues a year to 10 and slashed its Web staff considerably. In one sense, the latter move is a smart one. Portfolio’s website never generated
enough traffic to compete with the others, and so it makes sense to focus more intently on the long-form stuff, the type of article that doesn’t translate well to the Web anyway. Somewhat ironically, the drama that Portfolio is covering now will play a big role in its own sustainability. Where the market goes from here is anyone’s guess. But at the end of the day in intelligent business, it all comes down to the buck. Condé Nast will find out whether its foray into the crowded world of business magazines was worth the risk. For now, anyway, the magazine looks like a fine addition to Condé Nast’s portfolio. (Ed: Or not, as we went to press, Portfolio folded.) Essence Circulation: 1.1 million Date of Birth: 1970 Frequency: Monthly Price: $3.99 Natural Habitat: A fabulous hair salon in Brooklyn
By China Okasi Essence magazine’s most magnificent quality is that you’ll never be confused about—well, its essence. You’ll never have to guess to whom it’s targeted, or why on earth its readers must read it. Oh, that’s just common sense, you say. But in the evolving world of 21st century media, a magazine’s brand needs to be more solid than ever, or it risks joining the everexpanding heap of journalistic carcasses left by directionless mags that could not master their niches, and found themselves jacketless in today’s economic snowstorm. When you think Essence, you think, very simply, African-American woman—not in a way that’s monolithic, but in a way that’s heralding. After all, Essence has attained a level of staying power that would make eliminating the magazine in the African-American community equivalent to eliminating The New York Times in the New York community. Its former editor-in-chief, Susan L. Taylor, served for 19 years (from 1981 to 2000), and her monthly editorials, gorgeous features, and receding hairline made her so familiar to her readers, she’s now an icon—and thus, so is Essence. Moreover, it doesn’t hurt that famed NYRM
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