Conde Nast Scales Back Portfolio, Men's Vogue; Layoffs Are Coming
This story was written by Tameka Kee.
The print publishing cuts just keep coming. Cond Nast plans to cut budgets company-wide by 5 percent, including scaling back the number of Portfolio and Men's Vogue issues it publishes and laying off some staff, NYT (FRB: 066570) reports. Men's Vogue is taking the biggest hit, shifting to bi-annual production from 10 issues per year, and business-industry last-year-darling Portfolio will go from 12 issues to 10. Most of Men's Vogue's operations will be folded into Vogue, while some of Portfolio's online components, including ad sales, will be bundled with Wired magazine. While the layoffs with hit various titles, the NYT cites unidentified sources saying that the two aforementioned titles will absorb most of the job cuts.
At our FOBM conference Tuesday, Cond Nast group president David Carey was adamant that Portfolio was healthy and wouldn't be whittled down to a "digital only" publication, and was quite bullish on the magazine's digital revenue generation potential earlier this year. Cond Nast launched Portfolio amidst much fanfare in April 2007. The news comes just days after Time Inc. and Gannett (NYSE: GCI) both said they were resorting to mass layoffs, and the Christian Science Monitor announced it will shift to printing its paper edition weekly instead of daily.
Rafat adds: How long before the artificial boundaries between Conde Nast and Condenet last, considering the tension between the two units over the years? Doesn't that need a full overhaul, instead of these temporary cosmetic changes? And I wouldn't be surprised if Portfolio ends up being a special section with Wired magazine or New Yorker a year down the line
By Tameka Kee