Portfolio Magazine to Shutdown

Latest victim: Portfolio

The Great Media Collapse of 2009 continues unabated.  Latest victim: the upscale business magazine Portfolio.

Despite having collected more than 450,000 subscribers in two years, the magazine launched by Conde Nast to compete with Fortune and Forbes will lay-off more than 80 workers and then close in May.  Portfolio hit the market with a lot of hype and potential.  The magazine recruited some of the best business writers in the market to jump on board, including Kevin Maney (from USA Today), David Margolick (from Vanity Fair) and Dan Golden (from the Wall Street Journal).

Hopefully, the staff is picked up by other business publications, but the prospects aren’t very good for journalists as newspapers and magazines continue to reduce staff and struggle with declining advertising revenue.  I’ll miss Portfolio and its long-form, innovative business writing.  I thought the magazine had really hit its stride in the last several months.

Too bad Conde Nast is unable to bankroll the magazine through 2009.  Expect more bad news for newspapers and magazines as we hit the warmer months – and typically slower ad buying months of the summer.

Next up: the Boston Globe.  The deadline for Globe unions to giveback more than $20 million in concessions or face the prospects of a shutdown is May 1 and thus far it looks like it may come down to the wire.