THINGS are getting so bad in the magazine industry these days that they no longer wait until Friday to sneak out the bad news.
The ax fell yesterday at Condé Nast, the home of the glitziest magazines in the business. When the counting is done, it is expected that more than 100 people will be out of work in a one-day bloodbath that is unprecedented in the history of the company.
Men’s Vogue is cutting back to two issues a year from 10 and will now be a standalone supplement to Vogue magazine. Portfolio magazine, headed by Joanne Lipman, is being downsized by 20 percent, and the Web team at Portfolio.com, headed by Dan Colarusso, is being stripped down to a five-person operation from 35.
Of course, not everyone who is toast is officially aware of it yet, as the fine-tuning and paperwork is still being sorted out.
At Men’s Vogue, most of the 60-person staff is out as of next Friday. That includes Publisher Marc Berger, who only a day ago was seen wining and dining a client at Bottega del Vino, clearly unaware of impending doom. Editor-in-Chief Jay Fielden is being absorbed back into the mothership, Vogue, which is run by editrix Anna Wintour. The shutdown is said to be a big personal embarrassment to her and her bid to expand her empire.
Meanwhile, Portfolio’s print edition is cutting back its frequency to 10 times a year from 12.
One source said there are two edicts that were handed down by CEO Charles Townsend. One involves a 5 percent across-the-board staff reduction, which can be fulfilled by leaving open jobs unfilled for the foreseeable future, or chopping staff.
The other involves a separate 5 percent cut in discretionary spending, including travel and expense accounts, subscriptions, limos and working meals.
Some magazines are being asked to trim the editorial well by two to four pages per issue.
Another source said that the only thing keeping Portfolio going is the pride of Condé Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse, who doesn’t want to admit that the magazine is faltering. “It would be too much of an embarrassment,” this person said.
It has been a dizzying day at Condé Nast, which in the past had been immune to the tumult that shook up other publishing houses.
Hours after the first cutback news emerged, Men’s Vogue officially folded. It’s the second Vogue spin-off to disappear this year. Earlier, Vogue Living quietly ditched its fall issue – and there is no sign of the magazine returning.
Suspicion is now being cast on one of the few remaining Vogue spin-offs, Teen Vogue, which the company insists is fine even as every other teen magazine in the category has faltered. Only two weeks ago, Hearst folded Cosmo Girl.
Shuttering Men’s Vogue buys time for Details, another perennial problem child at Condé Nast that seems to have weathered the latest storm.
At Portfolio, the magazine and dot-com staffers were summoned by e-mail into separate meetings shortly after noon yesterday. The magazine people were told 20 positions might have to be trimmed from a 100-person staff, but they were also assured by Tom Wallace, the company’s editorial director, that “this is not a Men’s Vogue situation.”
Wallace said that Newhouse’s “personal commitment to the magazine remains strong,” according to one source.
Cutbacks at Portfolio.com were far deeper, as the company abandoned any pretense that it could build a financial Web site that could compete with CNN Money or Forbes.com.
The site is going to be “bare bones, maybe a couple of bloggers, and a place to sell magazine subscriptions,” said one source.
David Carey, the president of the Condé Nast business group, said that the magazine will rack up 680 ad pages this year, but the expectation that it would grow to 800 in 2009 and 1,000 by 2010 was derailed by the economic crisis.
There will surely be more cutbacks ahead, as individual magazines work through the numbers.
Said one insider, speaking about the Portfolio situation, “It all happened so fast that the specifics aren’t known yet.”
Added another veteran, “They’ve folded magazines before, but I can’t remember another time where they’ve done anything like this,” speaking of the widespread cost-cutting.
No Culture
Quietly, and with little fanfare, Culture + Travel magazine also disappeared.
The magazine, started by British multimillionaire Louise T. Blouin MacBain, has been troubled almost from its debut in fall 2006.
James Truman, once the editorial director at Condé Nast, had been signed to be the CEO and editorial head of LTB Media to help launch the magazine, but he had a falling out with MacBain.
MacBain maintained a jet-setting lifestyle, even while her publishing operations sputtered. Michael Boodro helmed the magazine after Truman quit, but he eventually joined Martha Stewart Living.
Express exit
American Express Publishing, headed by CEO Ed Kelly, said it was slicing 22 jobs from its publishing roster, which includes Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine. The news, which came in an internal e-mail from Kelly on Wednesday, was first reported by Women’s Wear Daily yesterday.
“Due to a number of factors that our company and industry face – a decline in ad spending, increased prices for postage, paper and ink, and changing media-consump tion habits – I have de termined that we must streamline and restructure functions to better prepare our organization to meet these business challenges, ” said Kelly.
“These employees have been notified by their leaders and most will be leaving over the next couple of weeks.”
The announcement came only one day before the parent company, American Express Corp. said it was slashing 7,000 jobs.