Mr. Magazine

If you recall those black boxes in the picture of the Condé Nast Portfolio’s staff two days ago, well I received one this morning, and let me tell you it was worth the wait. First impression, wow… second impression more wow… I know I am not going to have time to actually sit down and read the whole issue now, (For those of you who do not know me, I am the chair of the Journalism Department at The University of Mississippi and they really pay me to do other things beside reading magazines). The funny thing is that media critics are issuing their verdicts without even giving the magazine the chance to hit the newsstands (a week from today)… If it were up to the print (funny to say that) media “Some analysts question whether Condé Nast’s new Portfolio magazine will fare better than other business magazines,” read the caption accompanying the picture of the cover of the new magazine in the New York Times Business Day section this morning. Some even went as far to state “I don’t think they (Condé Nast) would make the same decision to launch a business magazine now because the climate ahs changed since they announced.” The sad part those analysts have forgotten the history of the magazine industry plus they did not even see the magazine or any of its content. Just as a quick reminder about launching a magazine in the worst of times, Fortune was launched by Henry Luce in the midst of the Great Depression with a dollar cover price (think one dollar in 1930). There will more on the first issue of Portfolio as soon as I can leave my office and find a quite corner and read the whole “glowing” package.

My friend Rex Hammock is asking the same question I am asking here…is this the cover of the first issue of Condé Nast Portfolio? From all indications, the one on the left looks like it is the cover of the newsstand edition, with a flap for cover lines, similar to that of the very successful approach of The New Yorker, the one on the right is for subscribers …Both covers appear on the Portfolio.com web site . This maybe it, since David Carey told me that the cover of the first issue “glows…” and the one I see definitely does that. Let the suspense continue few more hours…

The baby is born and here is the proof of the delivery.

The picture above of the entire team of Condé Nast Portfolio, with packages containing the first issue of the magazine ready to be shipped late on Sat. night in front of the Fed Ex truck on 43rd street at 4 Times Square (Condé Nast headquarters) in New York City. As the countdown continues, David Carey (thanks for sending the evidence) described the events of the day to me. “As a ‘launch fan’, you would have loved today,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Our entire team gathered in NY, to assemble by hand our very handsome ‘charter advertiser packages’ — for most of the team, it was the first time they had seen the actual magazine (we’ve kept it under wraps internally as well as externally), and it was so exciting.” He added, “At the end of the day, we all walked down nearly down 500 boxes to a waiting FedEx truck on 43rd Street, and sent out the first copies to top CEOs, clients, press… — all to arrive on Monday morning, the exact same day the issue press breaks…” David sounds like one proud daddy, and he ought to be. In a climate of magazine industry leaders self-made “doom and gloom predictions,” here comes a major sense of “proud bloom” to remind us that print is not dead, but is alive, well and kicking. If nothing else, Condé Nast is sending a loud and clear message that they still believe in print and its power, and in the same time they are using the power of the print brand to expand to other forms of the media as they become available whether online or on your mobile phone.
Thanks David for sharing and all the best on the birth of the new baby. As a quick reminder, the baby was born with 332 pages from which 185 are ad pages. Indeed, a healthy one.

What does Garden & Gun have in common with Condé Nast Portfolio besides being born on the same day? The publishers of both magazines are ex-publishers of The New Yorker. Rebecca Darwin, shares the same honors with David Carey as being a former publisher of The New Yorker. And in the midst of all the fanfare accompanying CN Portfolio’s launch, Ms. Darwin ushered her first issue of the 21st Century Southern America to the market place without any fanfare compared to that of her colleague at her former employer. As for the cover, no surprise here. Pat Conroy graces the cover of the first issue of Garden & Gun. The magazine has a total of 132 pages from which almost 23 pages are ad pages. Editor in Chief John Wilson has managed to create a first issue with a lot of “fanfare” writings and photography. To get your hands on the first issue of Garden & Gun, click here, or just visit a newsstands and spend your $4.95. It is worth it. The second issue is set for June and the magazine plans to publish 10 issues a year.

The countdown continues for the launch of Condé Nast Portfolio with the media reporters and the bloggers running competitions on who will grace the first cover and where the image of the cover will first appear. Media Industry Newsletter online is running a Quick Pulse survey asking its readers Where will the Condé Nast Portfolio launch cover first appear? Advertising Age, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or Other… to cast your own vote click here. My friend Rex Hammock, of Hammock publishing already voted for the other option. Rex thinks it is going to be on Portfolio.com that will launch on Monday. I will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, here is some more information about the most talked about launch of the year. “Condé Nast’s launch methodology, developed over the course of several award-winning product introductions, schedules a pause between the first and second issues,” says a Confidential Closing Report for Charter Advertisers sent to the magazine advertisers. This strategy was first used with the launch of Lucky, then Domino, and now Portfolio. All three are Condé Nast properties. It “enables a new property to gather extensive feedback and implement any recommended fine-tuning immediately for the second issue and beyond.” The first issue of Condé Nast Portfolio carries 185 ad pages divided among 95 charter print advertisers representing “the largest single collection of blue-chip brands ever found in a magazine in the business category.” Portfolio.com launches with “ten exclusive charter advertisers, a tier-one group of financial, technology, and travel marketers,” the report stated. The second issue of the magazine will be out August 21 and commences its monthly frequency with a 350,000-rate base. Portfolio.com 2.0 will go live in September. To quote David Carey, the group president and publishing director, “It has been years since a new magazine arrived in the marketplace with this level of ambition — and heft.” I agree wholeheartedly. 36 more hours to wait…and counting … 35 hrs, 59 seconds, 58, 57, 56…..