The Condé Nast Christmas party was held Dec. 16 — much later in the season than ever before — without Chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr., the man who for years had engineered the secretive seating chart that propelled it into one of the most-hyped parties of the season.
It is the first time in memory that Newhouse did not attend. That’s apparently because the chairman has quietly retired from day-to-day operations.
“He retired around this time last year,” CEO Charles Townsend told Media Ink, “although he still owns the company, so I guess you never really retire.”
This year the party was held in the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and attendees had to endure a rather lengthy explanation of Egyptian artifacts from the Met’s curator.
That’s a departure from its usual roost, a luncheon at the Four Seasons restaurant for top editors, including Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, the New Yorker’s David Remnick and other publishing elite.
Newhouse, 86, is still the titular chairman but has been in declining health during the past few years.
Running the show lately has been Townsend; President Bob Sauerberg; Condé Nast Entertainment head Dawn Ostroff; and family members Steve Newhouse, the head of Advance.net, and Steven’s wife, Gina Sanders, the CEO of the Fairchild divison, and Si’s cousin, Jonathan Newhouse, head of Condé Nast International.
Steve “Si” Newhouse and Sanders were on the scene Monday night.
When Newhouse ran it, for much of the early years, the luncheon was accompanied by an annual photo and the photo was studied as much as the old Kremlin photos in the Soviet Union to see who was closest to the seat of power.
When the photo was eventually abandoned in the late 90s, Condé-ologists tried to glean the ins and the outs from the seating chart — who was seated with Si and other top executives.
This year, there was an added element of intrigue because Wintour has been reshaping a few of the magazines in her new role as the company’s artistic director, where she replaced the top editors at Lucky and Condé Nast Traveler and re-worked Glamour.
Condé watchers had hoped to see where Glamour editor Cindi Leive was in relation to Wintour. Alas, it was a cocktail party and all small talk and mingling.
Another trademark of the Si era — the “January surprise,” where Si would return in early January from his month-long break in Vienna and shake up the ranks of top editors and publishers — is also changing.
“No January surprise, but hopefully a lot of excitement in 2014,” Townsend said.
For the first time in its history, Condé’s digital operations posted a small profit, insiders said.
“We had a fabulous year,” said Townsend, who declined to disclose revenue or profit. Maybe not an all-time record buster but he did say it was “certainly the best in the past five years” with print and digital revenue both rising.