Portfolio was basically the starter pistol for Conde Nast's fall: a publication that would've been great with an online-only presence that instead screwed the pooch by disregarding their awesome online staff and instead trying to make a Tina Brown-modeled finance magazine with swagger. Examples of their miserable print presence? A Dov Charney cover story that was two years late. Lipman had the helm! But back to that in a moment.

Her theory—that Feminism isn't where it should be at this point—may very well might be right!

There're some great examples of places where sexism still exists, particularly in Hollywood and in some of the very, very misogynistic pop culture this country's turning out daily (forgetting what some of pop culture's women—Kate Gosselin being Public Enemy #1—have done onto themselves). I'd love to talk about gender politics—and yes, bring up the fact that there are no women on our masthead, too—but that's not nearly as interesting as simply assuming Lipman's idea to hold water, and referencing all other inquiries regarding this theory to another website, the first hour of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, and then moving forward to drop jaws at Lipman's insanely massive, overwhelming ego put forth in an essay that could've been something far more substantial.

Where to start? How about right here:

So why have we stalled out?

Part of the reason can be traced to the aftermath of 9/11.

Everyone's life was reshaped by 9/11. Like many New Yorkers, I experienced that day in an intensely personal way: I was in the World Trade Center with a colleague when the first plane hit. And we were just outside the second tower, making our way through burning debris, hunks of airplane seats and far worse when the second plane came in directly over our heads.

I'll spare you the manner in which she tied that together, suffice to say it's got her quoting Graydon Carter about irony being dead, and then backtracking to say irony's still alive (which, as you'll later see, is very, very ironic), and that after 9/11, the conversation regarding women suffered greatly. Without providing any examples except for a Google search of an interviewer that turned up pictures of boobs. You can Google anyone's name and come up with pictures of boobs. Welcome to the internet, maybe this kind of know-how explains why Portfolio's web strategy sucked so badly. There's also this charmer:

As a freshman, I had an interview for a magazine internship in New York City. As I sat down, making sure to demurely close up my slit-front skirt over my knees, the interviewer barked, "If you want the job, you'll leave that open."

Scandalous! But is the blunt force of this *racy* anecdote really worth putting in the middle of an Op-Ed about how far women haven't come when you're trying to prove some, but not all progress past that? Surely, it belongs somewhere, but in this context, it just seems self-serving, as if Lipman's trying to say, Ladies, I've been there, and I got past it. Isn't the point that they've all been there, but more importantly, that they're still there? It's kind of absurd. Lipman also cites the way her career was described in an article as "leggy," which is (A) funny, (B) could be true in four different contexts outside of what she thinks of her actual legs and (C) is presented without any context whatsoever! We don't even know which article she's talking about, so how can we decide what the hell that means? Good thing The NYTpicker came in to regulate on this thing. Observe the smackalicious smackdown:

Here's what Steve Fishman actually wrote in New York Magazine last April:

S. I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Condé Nast, falls in love with his editors. His romance with Joanne Lipman began over lunch at his U.N. Plaza apartment, with its beige carpets-no red wine allowed-and paintings by Warhol, de Kooning, Cézanne. Lipman, 47 years old, who'd spent her entire career at The Wall Street Journal, is a serious journalist with a serious mien, and long legs, which she likes to show off with short-skirted power suits. Lipman is "attractive," in Newhouse's vernacular-"He uses the word like others use the word spiritual," says a former editor. The two brainstormed at a small dining-room table. Newhouse, in his standard worn New Yorker sweatshirt, told her he had an idea for a business magazine. Newhouse didn't say much more; he rarely does. He asks questions. But Lipman excitedly filled in the details.

Anyone who thinks that sentence — or even that paragraph — sums up Lipman's career as "leggy" just can't read.

Touche! Lipman's essay is, among other things, disingenuous towards the discrimination she's "faced" in that regard alone. And unfortunately, she's writing for people who can read, but who often don't have the time to discern the smell of bullshit from the sound of the truth, especially because this is a newspaper, and they're supposed to be able to trust what's there (ha).

The Batman-like NYTpicker also notes that a few sentences later, Lipman preaches to the ladies:

"Don't be afraid to be a girl."

Ladies and grown-ass women, how much do you enjoy it when you're referred to as a "girl?" I know it's a little different than being a Jew making Jew-jokes, but still, I'm not sure it's something I could get away with. Why the double-standard, Jo?

Back to the failure of Portfolio. Remember this gem from Page Six?

EYEBROWS were raised last week when Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman - not known for her modesty - not only insisted on attending the World Economic Forum in Davos but demanded to fly to Switzerland first class. "It's just jaw-dropping," an insider said. "Not only is her magazine not profitable, but she just laid off almost the entire Web site and fired many others on the print side." Portfolio has cost Condé Nast more than $150 million, so far. But a company rep claims the trip was necessary: "All of our editors are continuing to cover and attend the events that are important and relevant to their magazines." But those who found Davos not relevant enough to make the trip included Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Chevron CEO David O'Reilly, Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankenfein, Sony chief Howard Stringer and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

Can we spell out the joke, here? The one way Lipman's completely wrong about men and women meeting in the middle is the example she set: that they both possess the capability to be equally as disgustingly vapid when it comes to the captain punching holes in their sinking ship. Both men and women, hand in hand, can disregard integrity for grossly incompetent, morale-shuttering selfishness!

It's like The MoDow School of Essayists is working on their class of 2009, and Lipman's first presentation is shoot-for-summa stuff. Even as someone who thinks everything Maureen Dowd writes smells like Julia Childs' Cote du Horeshit recipe, I can appreciate this. Except, Lipman's essay actually reads like a subversive "Portfoilio failed not because I was at the top, but because a woman was at the top in a still very male-dominated world" tome. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, or the first step in the Kubler-Ross model. It's something well-insulated by angry gender bloodpolitik projection, or so Lipman would like to think. We're not the cavemen you'd like to paint us as, Joanne, and the women reading your bullshit aren't the Tarzan'd Janes you're telling them they are, either. If the system's gonna change, it's gonna have to start by dispatching with self-serving setbacks like you.

Joanne, who never really got along with her staff, didn't go to the after-folding drinks with the riff-raff, but she is having her own mag death drinks at her place soon. But still not inviting the riff-raff! Hey, she's also been joking around. Check out these back-to-back zingers in an interview with Newsweek:

What two things would you do differently, if you had a second go at launching Portfolio?
Lipman: I can only give one-to launch in a better economy.

When did you realize that the closing was inevitable?
Lipman: That point never came.

Ha! When it comes to jokes, go big or go home, amirite? Anyhow she says she's planning a vacation, but I don't know why, since she apparently lives in quite a nice bubble already: "I don't read Gawker," she told Page Six."It's kind of like Twitter: a time suck and mostly useless."
It's true! She could add "although also run by a tyrannical leader, still in business."

The Condé Nast business magazine would have the inside dirt on Rupert Murdoch's man-eating wife Wendi. Infighting at Gucci. CIA informants inside American corporations. And maybe something servicey on private jets.

The Observer:

The make-believe stories were the perfect intersection of business with everything else, as Ms. Lipman liked to say. That is, business was never enough of a topic on its own for a story.

Imagining those stories is, of course, easier than delivering them. But it's not clear Lipman was particularly imaginative in the first place: The Observer's sources (like some others) blame the magazine's downfall in large part on the editor's lack of strong vision for the title, beyond "fancy Condé Nast business thing." (Lipman countered she was consistently aiming to be contrarian.)

At least she knew enough to reject titles like Liquid, Advance and The File. To bad all the other, more promising bits in the prototype, from the stories to the non-concept cover, were thrown out along with them.

I worked at Portfolio for the first 17 issues of its 21 issue run, first as a fact checker and then as a staff writer. I was there for four months before the debut issue came out—four months characterized by sparse work and ample free food and beverage. After that issue came out, we sat around for another three months as we took the summer off, waiting to start our monthly publishing schedule in September 2007. Well, I'm sure market research, advertiser meetings and focus groups were all being conducted, and we had office supplies to order, but the vast majority of the nearly triple digit staff mostly sat around and waited for September.

I was a computer geek for several long years after college, and though I enjoyed it, it wasn't my calling. So I moved to New York and decided to become a journalist. (For anyone whose jaw drops at my insouciance here, may I remind you, journalism schools were quite laughable for much of this century, and many graduates of them still say their main value was to network and learn the business, not the craft.) After writing some freelance articles and getting a foot in the door at another Condé Nast magazine, I found my way to Portfolio.

Knowing little about the media world, I was suitably impressed with the pedigrees of everyone I worked with. Their resumes were dotted with long-term assignments from Time, The New Yorker, Fortune, The New York Times and other A-list publications. The most popular being the Wall Street Journal, the former home of editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman and much of her top staff. I never questioned why anyone would leave those places for something new. It's in a writer's ethos to create—who would choose to to keep cranking out story widgets at a dying gray broadsheet over the chance to sketch the lines of a new magazine funded by the glossiest media company in the world?

In the early days, there was a torrent of optimism in the still spacious halls of the 17th floor. But almost from the beginning, there were undercurrents of dissent. From what I knew of media, maybe from what I imagined of media, or saw in the movies, dissent was good, or at least not bad. It helped sharpen the premise and focus of an editorial product, helped those in charge of creating it to beta test it (to borrow a phrase) before it met public scrutiny. Would there ever be scrutiny. But if you have to say one thing about the failure of Lipman to create a successful magazine, it would be that dissent was not brooked by her. Not ever.

First, let me amplify, the magazine was a failure. It was not market conditions or the general economic meltdown that forced Si's hand, it was a failure to create something that people wanted to read. I harbor no personal ill will towards her or anyone I worked with, but Si's best editors-in-chief all have one thing in common, which is they know how to channel and predict the predilections of their readers and turn at least a couple issues a year into can't miss propositions. Lipman, a reporter from middle class suburban New Jersey, like me, who was savvy enough to climb to the top circle of the Wall Street Journal hierarchy, and did a good enough job there to be poached for millions by Si Newhouse, did not have this particular talent.

When others at the magazine tried to inject their talents into the dialogue by questioning the wisdom of certain articles, certain cover choices, word choices, headlines, etc., Lipman was not interested in hearing from them if their ideas about those things differed from hers. Editorial meetings evolved from an initially respectful differing of opinions among equals into contentious, adversarial affairs. When Lipman took any advice at all, it usually came from the top deputies she brought with her from the Journal. Yet despite her tight grip on the magazine's editorial content, there was the obvious scattershot, disconnected mix of stories and covers, and the pendulum swung wildly from issue to issue. Lipman's means of survival and ascension at the Journal soon became clear with firings and departures and freeze outs at Portfolio: they had less to do with editorial acumen and more to do with knowing how to squash revolutions and power plays.

A fine way to run an empire, and clearly a page from the cutthroat world of high finance that every Journal staffer knows intimately. But it was never her empire to run, nor was it really an empire at all. The rulers were ultimately the readers, because readership leads to advertisers. And readers were given short shrift at Portfolio. Fine, they got a bound magazine each month, with elegant covershots of hideous men, pretty and expensive photography inside, and very beautiful design. It looked pretty important, except maybe the one with Dov Charney on the cover. But its beauty was, at its best, skin deep.

When readers opened to the articles in Portfolio, they got a cruel shock. They got stories by the biggest names in the industry, but they got their leftovers. I ask you, if you were Michael Lewis (until his last, best piece for the mag before going to Vanity Fair) or Roger Lowenstein, would you submit your best stories to Portfolio, or to the much bigger and more important Times Magazine? Readers got some articles written by really good writers who could've become A-listers, had their articles not been edited within an inch of their lives and rewritten mercilessly, as if not by magazine editors but rewrite men at the New York Post City Desk. They got some articles chock full of good raw reporting that should've been re-worked into something readable by those same rewrite happy editors. And they got some utter crap, written by hacks that should've never been there to begin with.

As for me, like a lot of the younger writers there, I was never really able to do much damage, or earn much praise. There were easily half a dozen writers under 30 there whose role was to be seen and not heard. Despite our hustling and trying to curry favor with our editors, in the hopes they could sell us to Lipman, we were up against the faceless contract contributors for space, and we — especially me — usually lost that battle.

When I was laid off, I couldn't feel too bad about it right then, because the writing had been on the wall. I surely took the prize for the least output by a salaried staff writer, ever, due to a variety of faults, many my own, some not. (Well there were those legendary New Yorker writers who kept offices for decades after their one and only contribution to the magazine was published, but that's a different era.) But I did feel bad about the past. About watching scads of competent people get frustrated and leave, or get fired, about watching new people come in and quickly find they were expected to butt their heads against a brick wall all day for every original idea they hoped to contribute, and mostly about the promise that was completely unfulfilled thanks to the way the magazine was run. That day, when I polled some of the remaining staff, no one gave the place more than a year to live.

It was an insane idea to launch a print magazine in 2007, one so crazy it just might've worked. We were given everything we needed to succeed— late deadlines, a bottomless (well, maybe not) pile of cash, and a mandate to get the best people in the business on our team. A website that started out wobbly became relevant. Yes, the economy exploded, but Fortune launched in the Great Depression. The economy falling out should've been a new business magazine's Pearl Harbor, not its Waterloo.

It was a peculiar thing to run out the string at a magazine destined for the scrap heap, even if I ultimately got my release before it tanked, as did, of all the deserving people there, most of the ace website staff. It was at that point that I knew Portfolio would go down with Lipman at the helm. Her reign was as tumultuous as, I'm sad to say, Gawker made it sound. You need a certain insulation from things like Gawker, I think, to keep your eye on the ball, especially when we stumbled so badly so early. But Gawker's observation of the spectacle did not create it. I wonder, though, if hubris mixed with defiance may have led the company to prolong Lipman's reign, in hopes of vindication, far past the point of reason. Yet in too many ways to enumerate here, we did not operate in what I fondly call a reality-based environment. In Lipman's meetings, firings were never firings, stories were never bad or ill timed, mistakes were never made. The air had long been sucked out of that room, and few staffers seemed to believe anymore in the mission of the place, despite a collective desire, and I mean this, to do as good a job as they could do, given the circumstances.

Early in my time there, I saw a Deputy Editor I learned from and respected be run out on a rail for his insouciance, his belief that the magazine could be a great thing. I wondered, as those early undercurrents of dissent began to swell, why no one was pointing out the empress had no clothes. Wasn't this journalism, capital J? Didn't it matter when seasoned vets thought we were going about things in a haphazard, disjointed, unfocused and fundamentally wrong way? Yes, but. These were also jobs, capital J. And as is now clear, no one, inside or out, was ever going to save Lipman from herself.

And who knows, as her faltering became apparent, what kind of pressures Lipman faced from her boss, and his boss, and Newhouse himself, that further distorted the title? Essentially, it's hard to take principled stands when you work pretty much at the beneficence of a billionaire. And if you're wondering what's wrong with journalism these days, that's pretty much it.

Paul Smalera is a freelance writer at work on a book.

If you're a former Portfolio staffer and you'd like to give your take, we'll print it here. Just email me.

One might call Lipman's tastes erratic. The business magazine editor, said to find business journalism uninteresting, is known around the office for spiking piles and piles of copy, enough even to prompt comparisons to Tina Brown in her fussy Condé Nast heyday.

From the outside, Lipman's impulsiveness is apparent in her curious cover choices. After the outbreak of the worst economic crisis in 70 years, she put a picture of clothier Dov Charney on the front of Portfolio. Next month, amid talk of bank nationalization and CEO immolation, the magazine's cover will feature Sarah Palin.

From inside the publication comes a tragic story involving a cover that never was: Barack Obama, shot by photo legend Annie Leibovitz at Lipman's behest, for the December-January cover. Worried that everyone else would put the president-elect on the cover, Lipman is said to have killed the portrait after it was taken.

So instead of what was believed to be exclusive work from star photographer Leibovitz, of the newly-elected president, timed exquisitely to front-run the inaugural buzz, Portfolio ended up with a concept image of a dead bull on Wall Street; clever, but severely tardy for a meltdown that shifted into overdrive nearly a full financial quarter earlier.

"Clever, but severely tardy" could also be used to summarize much of what has ended up inside the magazine — and to describe whatever Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse will inevitably have to have done to Portfolio in Lipman's wake.

That's easily Lipman's worst call since fronting with American Apparel founder Dov Charney in the first Portfolio following the economic meltdown — greeting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with a story about a t-shirt vendor.

Staff tried to warn Lipman about the Palin cover, according to Women's Wear Daily, just as they did before she disastrously published stale scuttlebutt about a Nixon-era scandal last January. Lipman, defiantly ignorant of business news, was no more compliant this time around.

As with November's Charney issue, April's Portfolio will ignore an historic fulcrum in American finance, when anti-Wall Street populism is at an all-time high and calls for wholesale bank nationalization are gaining real ground (establishment figures like former IMF man Stephen Johnson having come to concur with once-fringe economists like Nouriel Roubini).

Sure, famed Nixon campaign-chronicler Joe McGinniss is penning the Palin piece, and there's some sort of vague business angle involving oil, but come on: Even Lipman's heretofore steadfast boss Si Newhouse has to be able to see how out of touch his business magazine now looks. Even if the glamour-mag publisher wasn't much concerned with finance six months ago, the imploding advertising market ensures he's up to speed now. And he'll be wondering why Lipman isn't.

Cause hey, there's so much easy credit around, right? And the value certainly won't go down! You should actually probably buy two houses, and then maybe flip them?

Watch CBS Videos Online

(Also LOL @ CBS calling it "Conde Naste Portfolio." Miss Lipman if you're Naste, etc.)

Si Newhouse, the big boss of Conde's parent company, has always been perceived as having a limitless pile of money to subsidize unprofitable magazines. He doesn't. The company has been in belt-tightening mode for more than a year now, and the weak publications are getting killed with little compunction. The days of unending cash flow into fancy, money-losing magazines being used as vanity brands are over. The fundamental problem, as David Carr notes:

Donald Newhouse, 78, who oversees the newspapers, and Si Newhouse, 80, who runs the magazines, each have been appraised at $8 billion by Forbes. But people who know the pair say that given their age, they are concerned about making sure they hand over a company that is healthy and profitable.

The company has traditionally used its newspapers to mint money that was then lavished on the magazines — “Don makes it and Si spends it,” as the saying went

But now newspapers no longer make money! So there is no money to be lavished upon anything. Everybody has to pitch in and cut back! At the New Yorker—Conde's best magazine and one of its worst at pulling in ads, currently—millionaire editor David Remnick and his reporters were staying with friends in DC for the inauguration, rather than hotels. To save money, like normals! (They're also extending the New Yorker Festival to ten days this year, which should bring in some extra cash).

That's kind of nice and inspiring. Less inspiring is Vanity Fair, which is actually re-using a 2007 Obama cover photo for its latest cover. That is just incredibly cheap, for one of America's most prestigious magazines. Yea, they surely had access issues. But come on. They could have gotten any number of celebrities to pose for their cover. If Obama is the only man that can sell magazines now, VF's entire model is fucked anyhow. Annie Leibovitz is giving way to Photoshopped stock pictures. Not good.

But at least they're cutting costs. The one not getting with the program: Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman, who reportedly demanded to fly to Davos first class. Some things never change.
(We mean Joanne Lipman screwing up.) [Pic via]

Soon after his post went up, Mr. Stern received a call from one of Condé Nast's lawyers, Eric Gisolfi of Sabin, Bermant & Gould. Mr. Gisolfi requested that Mr. Stern turn over the domain names belonging to New Yorker editor David Remnick, Vogue publisher Tom Florio, Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman, Lucky's Kim France, and Glamour's Cindi Leive.

So Cityfile chief Remy Stern decided to give Conde back its precious web addresses, god, okay fine. At least Conde is putting them to good use. [NYO]

SAM: I haven't figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize. There was a day when a newspaper put "Winner of Pulitzer Prize" on the front page, and people flocked to read the Pulitzer Prize story. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that that's the case today But I also think that there are scale issues. In other words, I think that if the goal is a Pulitzer, it's in the wrong place. In other words, we're not in the business of, in effect, underwriting writers for the future. We're a business that, in effect, has a bottom line. So as far as we're concerned, I think Pulitzers are terrific, but Pulitzers should be the cream on the top of the coffee. They shouldn't be the grounds. And I think there are a lot of scenarios in the newspaper industry where the entire focus is on Pulitzers. The entire focus is on becoming an international correspondent. I mean, I know that because our newspaper sent somebody to Kabul to cover the "Afghan Idol Show." Now, I know Idol is the No. 1 TV program in the world, but do my readers really want a firsthand report on what this broad looked like who won the "Afghan Idol" Show"? Is that news?

Haha, not sure what that "broad" bit was about, but otherwise, Sam, you are correct! This is just like the final season of The Wire, where the asshole editor chases Pulitzers at the expense of real local news. And you know everything on The Wire is gospel! Perhaps NYT boss Pinch Sulzberger should take Zell's advice, too:

As of last night, the entire market cap of the New York Times [Co.] was $1.2 billion. And my question to Arthur, who I think is out here someplace, is if you want to be a charitable trust, be a charitable trust. If you don't want to be a charitable trust, then you've got to focus on producing a return for investors' capital, and it's just that simple. It worked in the old days because you could be a public trust and you could do well for your shareholders because you had a monopoly, and monopolies are wonderful. I mean, I think competition is terrific, particularly for all those guys out there. Me? I like monopolies. I'm just sorry I waited 60 years to get into the newspaper industry because the 40 I missed were great.

Well by god, this gnomish asshole CEO of a debt-ridden company just summed things up once and for all. Listen to him, Pinch. (Although you may also want to note that the reason papers like the LA Times can't afford to do Pulitzer-bait investigative stories any more is because Zell has cut staff to the bone.) [Portfolio]

[The ridiculous postscript to this interview: as soon as Lipman went to the audience for questions, in came Jeff Jarvis (or is it Jim? Always get them confused) to complain about online persecution of himself. Read this, then consider this:

Hi, Jim [sic] Jarvis. Mr. Zell, first, I may speak for others here when I say I wish you would do this more often and talk publicly more often. It's great fun. I'm a journalist, and I got attacked in Salon this morning…or Slate this morning—I get them confused—for holding journalists responsible for the fate of journalists.

Meh.]

With a boss like Si Newhouse, it seems doubtful that Lipman should get too comfortable. She does have a couple of things going for her: Her credentials (Ivy League, WSJ) are strong, which Newhouse respects; and the fact that she is a woman who has worked her way up. One only has to look at the histories of Vogue editor Anna Wintour and former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown to see that Newhouse has never backed down from supporting women in top editorial posts even when others questioned his decision. In those cases, his commitment paid off. With Lipman, the payoff is far less assured.

And here's what she should really think about: the newest rumor is that Conde Nast execs have now started to whisper about supposed distinctions between a "launch editor" and an actual, long-term editor. Lipman oversaw Portfolio's launch, and garnered herself a lot of critics in the process. Creating a situation in which "launch editor" was considered a job in itself—and not an automatic qualification as editor-in-chief for years to come—could conceivably be a way to gently ease Lipman out in favor of someone more popular and experienced. Thanks for the help with the launch, we'll handle the rest now, Joanne!

Would Si Newhouse buy into such a plan? It's impossible to know! He is loath to be pressured into decisions, which could actually work in Lipman's favor. Everyone will have to wait for the quiet boss in the raggedy clothes to make up his mind.

[NYT]

After all, Vanity Fair's position in Hollywood—where the magazine throws the hottest Oscar night party and has its pick of Hollywood stars for cover shoots—is hardly threatened by a one-year-old and troubled business magazine. Vanity Fair and Portfolio are part of the same company, for chrissake; and both deny the story—all be it half-heartedly. But petty infighting at Si Newhouse's publishing group is always plausible.

Ever since Alex Liberman's tenure as editorial director of Condé Nast, the group has been a collection of rival territories managed only by pitting the barons against eachother.

Vogue's Anna Wintour was installed as creative director under Grace Mirabella, the legendary editor to whom she was the anointed successor. Wintour and Vanity Fair's Tina Brown—both kicky English imports—fought for the favor of Liberman and Newhouse, and over stories; Brown wrote up a lunch with Princess Diana that Wintour had arranged as a private affair, and later ran a nasty exposé of her former colleague's businessman boyfriend. And Tina Brown was so put out by when shifted to the New Yorker that she sabotaged her successor, Graydon Carter.

Writes Judy Bachrach in Tina And Harry Come To America: Graydon Carter arrived at Vanity Fair the following week and found—nothing. There was a backlog of stories that had been sitting in a kill pile, articles previously considered by Tina or her editors that were, for one reason or another, deemed unfit for the magazine. But aside from this cache, Carter was left with no immediate resources: there was no indication of what pieces might go into succeeding issues, no drawerful of ideas. Vanity Fair always planned moths ahead, even if those plans never materialized. "Nothing, nothing, nothing," was the description of what had been left behind.

So, yes, Waxman's story—that Graydon Carter has prevailed on Hollywood friends such as Brian Grazer, Jim Wiatt and Brad Grey to keep Portfolio from any big Hollywood gets—is entirely plausible. Portfolio's lead Hollywood correspondent Amy Wallace is “being blacklisted a little bit," a former editor tells Waxman. Wallace declined to comment, which means she probably confirmed the suspicion to her friend Waxman.

Take this quote from Jesse Eisinger, a senior staff writer: “He’s made the trains run on time in some basic, fundamental way that as a start-up we were having problems with.” Later in the piece, an anonymous staffer, quite possibly Eisinger again on background, explains that Lipman brought in newspaper veterans who didn't understand that magazines required a proper mix of stories. “I don’t think everyone understood that coming in here, and I think they’re still learning it, but it’s basic stuff for magazine people.”

As for Lewis, he toes the line. But the Conde Nast veteran does that he wanted a broader job and more editorial input than he was allowed as managing editor of David Remnick's New Yorker. I'm sure there are differences in the job specification, but a deputy's role is always more interesting under a leader as weak as Lipman.

So why would Lipman cooperate with a glowing profile of Portfolio's new regime that could only show her tenure in a poor light? Maybe she doesn't have a choice. The magazine needs all the good press it can get, even at the expense of her reputation; and she can no longer command deference from Koblin's interviewees. Portfolio's power cover, showing a woman's stilletoed foot subjugated by a male business shoe, was truer than it knew.

There's no evidence that the order came from Conde Nast bigwigs, who are generally relaxed about inter-title criticism; and Gladwell wrote us in an email that he hadn't asked for the post's removal. "No idea what you're talking about I'm afraid," said Gladwell. "Bercovici wrote about me?" But the embattled Lipman, unpopular among her own staff, depends on the goodwill of Newhouse. The most plausible explanation for the deletion: Lipman pre-emptively ordered the removal of the post to save Gladwell, the New Yorker and Conde Nast, from embarrassment. How collegial! Except, by deleting an item which would otherwise have been unremarked, Portfolio's succeeded only in drawing the attention of Slate's eagle-eyed Jack Shafer, and various blogs like this one. And the original post still remains, like a rebuke, in Google's cache of the Portfolio site. Here's the original article and, below, the page as it now appears.

Morale has always been low here, but it's never been
lower, and the downcline (to quote our Treasury
secretary) is steepening.

The only reason there's been no mass exodus is because
the pay is good, nobody else is hiring, and the
economy is at the abyss.

Many magazines develop into factions. At Portfolio,
the factions are quite lopsided. It's every last
person at the magazine versus Joanne Lipman, Amy
Stevens, and Kyle Pope. (With new managing editor
Jacob Lewis, who came over from The New Yorker,
bewildered and privately neutral, but loyal to Joanne
because that's his job.)

There's nothing new about Joanne's infuriations.
What's troublesome is that Conde Nast allows them go
on and on and on. The only thing predictable about
Joanne Lipman is that nobody has a frigging clue what
she wants. She orders up one thing and condemns the
editors for delivering it. She can't explain her story
judgment, and no one knows whether that's because she
has none, or because her mind is so internally
confused that even she doesn't know what she is
thinking from day to day or hour to hour.

Worst of all: outside of finance and advertising, she
knows squat about business, and maybe finance and
advertising too. The result is a mess of a magazine.
What's it supposed to be? If the readers don't know,
and the advertisers don't know, it's because the staff
doesn't know, and if Joanne knows she's not doing a
very good job of explaining it.

It's all too bad because Portfolio could have been so
good. "The Vanity Fair of business magazines" is an
idea that sounded great to most of us who joined up
here. But the opportunity is being pissed away.

Joanne gave a speech a week or so ago in which she
revealed that after she left her first meeting with Si
Newhouse, before she was hired, she was so happy she
could have been hit by a truck. This was interpreted
here as a plea to Si not to throw her in front of that
truck now. (Her kids must have been pleased to hear
that she regards a lunch with Si as the highlight of
her life.)

People tell me that calls for Joanne's head will
ensure her continued tenure, because Si will dig in
his heels.

But Si, you're a smart business person. She's wrecking
your magazine. Talk to the staff, they'll tell you.
You need to do something about it, before it's too
late for everybody.

It's totally true. Lipman ignored the advice she got early on not to hire people on staff (what monthly has a bunch of high level staff writers? Even at the New Yorker, where they're called staff writers, they're actually all under contract!) But Lipman, in her infinite wisdom, decided that she wouldn't be able to get her hack friends from the WSJ to come over unless they had staff gigs. But now, Jacob Lewis, the ME sent in by SI to clean things up, has been going around to try to convince these writers to go on contract. His pitch is that that way writers will own their own stuff (if you're staff, theoretically your stuff is owned by CN) so you can be anthologized! Great: $300 to be in some crummy anthology versus getting health insurance, 401K, pension and being MUCH harder to fire by the capricious talentless nut job you now know you're working for in an economic climate that makes it impossible to get other work. Hmmmmm. Any takers?

New Yorker staff writers are on contract? There is no dream.