CONDÉ Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. sat down Wednesday with Portfolio Editor-in-Chief Joanne Lipman to take a very serious look at every page in the upcoming November issue of Portfolio, his $100 million pet project.
When the meeting was over, a flurry of Newhouse-dictated changes ensued, and that had some staffers concluding that Si was not happy with the original incarnation of Portfolio issue No. 4.
“He was in the weeds,” said one source. “He’s never asked for re-dos before. It suggests the old man wasn’t terribly happy.”
Pish-posh, insisted a spokeswoman for Portfolio. She described the meeting as part of the normal way of doing business for a new magazine.
“Si and Joanne look at the issue every month and go through the magazine page by page,” said the spokeswoman. “In the way that [Condé Nast Editorial Director] Tom Wallace does it for other magazines, Si does it here.”
Added a spokeswoman for Newhouse: “He liked the November issue very much, and thought it was an excellent issue, just like he thought the October issue is an excellent issue.”
That might be true, but one source said that this particular meeting was longer and more intense than previous sit-downs between Si and his editor-in-chief.
What’s more, the meeting with Lipman followed the standard print order meeting in which a nearly complete version of the magazine is shown to advertising, circulation and marketing executives for the first time.
“He has never before torn things up the way he did at this meeting,” said the source.
As a result, the editorial staff is pushing copy through all this week right up until the “drop-dead” deadline of today – and insiders are worried they may miss that target.
“It seems like we’ve been closing the magazine for three weeks,” grumbled one source.
But another source insisted it is all proceeding smoothly and that the deadline will be met today as scheduled.
The November issue’s ad-page count is 107 pages, down from 117 in October, but still considered a good number in a difficult ad climate.
At least some of the changes spawned from that mid-week meeting may have been dictated by last-minute ad-page movement out of the November issue and into a future issue.
However, one insider insisted the changes amount to only “tweaks” to headlines and captions, as well as changes to the color on the cover. The cover topic was not changed.
Regardless, even those changes show the intense scrutiny the magazine’s fourth issue is under.
The November issue, which hits newsstands next month, will be the one that David Carey, Portfolio’s president and group publisher, and his ad-sales staff use when they make the rounds of media buyers in an effort to keep the magazine on the schedule for next year.
One insider said the magazine needs more “killer stories” that generate buzz, which at this critical juncture in the selling cycle would help the magazine retain advertisers.
As such, despite the suggestion that Lipman’s second issue was do or die, it might turn out that the fourth issue of the magazine is her make-or-break moment.
Lipman is under pressure to prove she’s ironed out many of the start-up problems, stabilized the staff and set the stage for a strong 2008.
That said, January is looking mighty chilly for Portfolio, with early estimates suggesting the magazine will be lucky to sell 50 ad pages for the month.
(To be fair, as a rule, all January magazine issues are thinner due to fewer ad pages and stories.)
Yet if the magazine is perceived as having lost its luster, that could trigger an even chillier reception next year.
There are many reasons for the January ad-page fall-off, including the fact that consumers sharply cut back their spending right after Christmas, which leads retailers to curtail their ad spending.
There are also logistical reasons. Ad agencies often don’t deliver print ads until the TV ads are finished.
New print ads for 2008 will not likely be completed when monthly magazines are closing in late October or November.
What Condé Nast seeks now is to make sure that the January tumble doesn’t carry over into the entire first quarter.
Domino effect
Domino, following the good fortune of Lucky magazine and its partnership with Gotham Books, is putting out its own book, “The Domino Book of Home Decorating.”
They’ve teamed up with Charles Melcher‘s Melcher Media – one of the more popular book packagers in the business.
They’ve done everything from best-selling “Lucky Shopping Guide” to “Sex & the City: Kiss and Tell,” which sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide.
Simon & Schuster won a spirited auction for the Domino book, agreeing to fork over an advance estimated at around $500,000.
The book is a bit of a departure for Simon & Schuster, which is building the back half of its 2008 list around books such as the memoir of New York Times columnist David Carr and the latest novel by “The Devil Wears Prada” author Lauren Weisberger.
“We like to keep one or two big illustrated books on our list,” said S&S Senior Editor Amanda Murray.
Domino Editor-in-Chief Deborah Needleman will serve as the editor of the book along with staffers Sara Ruffin Costello and Dara Caponigro.
Carlos lands
Although lots of people were speculating that Carlos Lamadrid would wind up at Alpha Media, where his old boss Kent Brownridge is now CEO, Lamadrid has thrown a curve ball.
Lamadrid, who was the publisher of Jane magazine when it was shut down last year, is joining Hachette Filipacchi Media as publisher of Woman’s Day, replacing Laura Klein, who is leaving the company.
People believed Lamadrid would end up in the Brownridge fold since the latter had hired Lamadrid to be the publisher of Men’s Journal when both worked at Wenner Media.
Metro cuts
Maggie Samways, the U.S. managing editor for the freebie Metro papers in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, has apparently been cut loose.
She had served as the interim editor of Metro New York before Jon Auerbach, a former city editor for The Post, was tapped to be editor-in-chief.
Metro’s U.S. papers generated only about $33 million in revenue last year, and papers in Boston and Philadelphia showed declines. New York had a slight increase in revenue, but its expenses were also up.