Rocky Road for Portfolio

In the New York Post, Keith Kelly has an interesting piece about Portfolio, Condé Nast's business magazine that was so long in getting out and trumpeted so much. There is a lot of pressure on the editorial front - ad sales are down between the premier and second issues, but that apparently is normal.

Ah, but the hype, the hype. How could any magazine live up to the expectations that this one was setting? I'm sure it's great having Tom Wolfe work on a story, but I'm not sure that most business magazines actually get what business readers really want. Too many are focused on being vessels of information for investors. Nothing wrong with that, but where can you read about strategy and dealing with problems and management? There are very few, and they tend to come either from academic sources or from the trade press.

It's fine to talk about editorial direction, but for that to exist, I think you need to know audience direction, and I'm not convinced that most business journalists understand that.