Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

There’s lots of talk this week about Condé Nast’s new business-oriented magazine Portfolio, which was announced back in 2005 but finally debuts this week with a whopping 332 page issue. The magazine, which will be sold for $4.99, is trying to be more like Vanity Fair than Fortune (or rather, I think Portfolio fancies itself as the Vanity Fair version of Fortune). Of course the big news in all of this is the fact that, well, a magazine is getting off the ground instead of going out of business. After all, magazines and newspapers have lately been in serious trouble from online competition, dwindling readers and disappearing ad-pages. Which is why there’s so much interest around Portfolio. Fifteen years ago — when magazine launches, as well as crashes, were fairly routine — this would not have made such a splash. But in today’s Internet-dominated world, starting a magazine is seen as both retro and foolhardy. (People privately wondered about the wisdom of the launching of Tina Brown’s Talk in 1999, when the Internet was just starting to explode; Talk lasted two years, and since then the Web has only grown bigger.)

What’s more interesting to me is the fact that Portfolio has launched a website in addition to the magazine (proving that Condé Nast’s trying to create not just a publication, but a brand). The site features content from the magazine as well as ads, video, RSS feeds, slideshows, half a dozen blogs, and an interactive City Guide section that utilizes content from Traveler Magazine (which is, surprise surprise, a Condé Nast brand). The site is moderately impressive, now is just in Beta, but if the content from Traveler is any indication Portfolio won’t be shy about incorporating content from other Condé Nast brands (which, in the end, could be a powerful form of stickiness for the site; tapping into the parent company’s vast online library would potentially make the site a content powerhouse instead of just an adjunct to the printed object). This strategy shows that, while Condé Nast’s decision to start a magazine may have people shaking their heads, the fact that there’s a robust online experience to go along with the magazine means they just might be aware of what they’re getting themselves into. Because there’s no denying a huge interest in the business world; that’s not the question. The question is more about whether there’s still an interest in magazines.

NY Times: In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine