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.

The novelist, modelizing author of Bright Lights, Big City, was commissioned to explore Art Basel Miami. The belated piece hardly touches on the art market, the only excuse Portfolio has to cover the event. According to our informant, McInerney, who was likely paid more than $30,000, went to a few parties, and dropped a few names in a sloppy account that he bashed out on the plane home. "Can't blame the guy for scamming, but how pathetic that we commissioned it and then ran it."

Bonus quote from the author, who chronicled the excesses of New York nightlife of the 1980s.

We were more interested in having fun and drinking vodkas and snorting cocaine when we could get it and staying up all night. It wasn't very conducive to fact-checking. [Guardian]

First of all, we're used to magazines rehashing old stories, and presenting them as new. But this isn't just dusty, it's ancient. Here's Portfolio's intro: "The Watergate era's second-most memorable crook, Robert Vesco, started out with nothing, enjoyed his brief moment as a low-life financial genius, and ended up imprisoned at home. In Cuba. We think." Now here's another feature, in Fortune: "Stalking Robert Vesco: Once America's most famous rascal, the fugitive embezzler now lives in Havana in modest seclusion, surrounded by armed guards." Sound familiar? That profile, by Arthur Herzog, was from 1986, twenty years ago.

At least Herzog managed to track down Cornfeld's notorious henchman. Fox reporter James Rosen, who adds very little to the earlier story, had to rely on second-hand sources. At least Portfolio's head of research came from the prissy New Yorker, and the fact checkers must have checked out the notes and documentation. But we hear that the author said that he'd lost the material "in a flood". (I'll have to remember that excuse.)

So why would Joanne Lipman publish an old story which didn't even check out? Before being picked by S.I. Newhouse's Conde Nast to launch its $100m business magazine, ran the soft, weekend section of the Wall Street Journal. The brittle editrix is famously, almost proudly ignorant of business journalism, preferring fiction. The Vesco story was news to her. That's fine. Portfolio is lifestyle pap for rich men, not an investigations unit. Sure, Rosen's rehash gets no play on the front cover; and the intro is extremely tentative ("In Cuba. We think.") — as it should be. The magazine is a team: even if Lipman doesn't have much judgment when it comes to business journalism, her colleagues do. Too bad, then, that she went ahead against universal opposition. The result is a fiasco for a magazine that, with lagging newsstand sales and poor buzz, really can't really afford one — and one for which Portfolio's vulnerable editor carries sole responsibility.

When pitched a story referencing Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a journalistic classic, Lipman interrupted: "I don't know it, and I don't like it." That quote has now spread to Fortune, Portfolio's main rival, where her counterpart, Andy Serwer, has taken to using it as an ironic catchphrase, we hear, when he dings a story idea. When Lipman's tenure at Portfolio ends, it should be a consolation that one of her bon mots has made it into the culture.

[Photomanipulation by knsaber]

To be sure, Portfolio has flooded the newsstands in an effort to make an impact, which means many copies are pulped; and embattled editor Joanne Lipman eschewed eye-catching tricks such as, oh, putting a recognizable face on the cover; and the magazine is still new. But, says one magazine analyst: "30s would be decent for a launch. Portfolio is such a misfire — it's far from just a cover problem."

Conde Nast has poured way too much money and reputation into Portfolio ever to let it fail, and the magazine is still a good idea. S.I. Newhouse's most successful titles, such as Vanity Fair, have a largely female readership: a demographic reality that the Conde ad salesmen gloss over when selling to auto marketers and mens' apparel brands. Conde Nast still needs a flagship title for high-income men. (Here ends the boring magazine business background.)

So, what to do? Joanne Lipman has already been forced to give up the arty covers of Portfolio's first few issues, in favor of more topical imagery (January's had a picture of a corporate spy). But her bosses have to wonder whether Lipman, whose reputation was made by the fluffy weekend section of the Wall Street Journal, is the right person to make a must-read publication for top executives.

David Carey, publisher of Portfolio and now other titles, was the big winner in Conde Nast's executive purge this week. The one thing that would stymie his continued ascension at S.I. Newhouse's court: the failure of Portfolio. So here's a bet that, with his expanded authority, he finds a replacement for Lipman. Let's float one wild idea: Wired is now broadly in Carey's sphere of influence, so slide over the West Coast magazine's editor, Chris Anderson. Sure, he enjoys his current job; and he's a bit too geeky to produce wealth porn; but the former Economist writer would bring some badly-needed authority to Portfolio.

He's just a severe type A personality, he's always on, a real man in a hurry. Obviously a strategic thinker. The one irony of Portfolio was that it was one of the rare cases I've seen where a publisher has a clearer vision for the brand and product than the editor. Before Joanne was hired, Carey articulated a vision for the magazine — an indispensable, knowing tool for top executives, top-notch substance with a luxury veneer — that would have silenced the critics if it had been executed.

Folks,

You may have heard that Chris Jones, portfolio.com's ME, has decided to pursue other opportunities. We'll miss him. But we're delighted that he'll be staying until the end of November to help us with the transition and to help find his successor. Chris has done a great job building and launching the site, which is exactly what he came here to do. He's brought together a first-rate team. Portfolio.com has already shot past some established online financial sites like Economist.com and FT.com, and is continuing to grow steadily. I'm also pleased that Chris's top news editor, Mark Stein, a veteran New York Times editor, will become deputy editor of the site, working closely with Chris and me. Laura Rich, the site's AME will also play a bigger role.

You'll probably read some nonsense about the transition, but don't be fooled—our whole team is excited about portfolio.com going forward.

Best,

Joanne

Joanne Lipman: Imperious, not quite sure how to run a magazine. But! Knows how to tell rich people what they should buy. Move her over to New York, a magazine whose only relevant section is The Strategist, your go-to guide when you need to know where to find $500 antique doorknobs. She's a natural fit. This, of course, would cause the exit of...

Adam Moss: An editor with the unique talent of turning every magazine he helms into some iteration of the late 7 Days. Whatever its faults, that title was always lively and exciting, unlike Vanity Fair, which feels a little flat these days. Send Moss to VF, where he can clean up the chaotic front of the book and still indulge his passion for stories about rich people. Sadly, the magazine would no longer require the services of...

Graydon Carter: This may sound like a counterintuitive move, but think about it: The man can't shut up about politics. Give him a perch at the New Republic and he'll be able to both fulminate his little heart out about the evil Republicans and liven up the book's incredibly soporific design. Sure, the world isn't crying out for an Annie Leibovitz photogallery of Al From, but it's miles better than the crappy illustrations the book currently offers. Unfortunately, this would result in plenty of spare time for...

Marty Peretz: Freed at last from his historic burden of being the lone voice in the media that keeps America's support of Israel strong, Peretz can bring his stilted prose and love of obscure words to Maxim, which would be a public service to the magazine's audience of mongoloids, who will be forced to use their other hand to open a dictionary. It'll be a series of monthly teachable moments! The one man who won't be around to learn anything, though, is...

Jimmy Jellinek: Let the Maxim editor take Greg Gutfeld's slot on Red Eye. Seriously, a monkey could do that job; Jimmy's at least two or three stages of evolution better than that. But what of The Gut?

Well! You know the one thing Tina Brown's Diana book was missing? A real man's appreciation of what a fox the late princess was. Greg's not afraid to be politically incorrect: We need his sharp insights concerning the tautness of Diana's thighs and the pendulousness of her cans. This book will sell like crazy! And then Greg can sit on his ass collecting royalty checks and waiting out Tina Brown's tenure at Portfolio. Everyone wins. Especially us!

Distressed Asset [TNR]

Also, hi, it's a magazine. Of course people in the "media beltway" are going to be interested in it! Particularly when everyone's got a friend who went to work at Portfolio and is worried about that friend's future, working for a hapless and megalomaniacal editor. And it's more than a little disingenuous, at this point, for Condé Nast to insist that it's so weird for people to be interested in how the magazine's doing. Their publicity campaign for the magazine was really something special.

As these things usually do, it all began with a press release almost exactly two years ago—August 24, 2005. "CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS TO LAUNCH NEW BUSINESS GROUP; JOANNE LIPMAN NAMED EDITOR-IN-CHIEF; DAVID CAREY NAMED PRESIDENT," the release trumpeted. At the time, Lipman said, "Condé Nast is the premier magazine publishing company, and I am delighted to be joining the team."

Things were quiet for a few months. Then, in March 2006, Lipman's BFF from the Journal, Amy Stevens, announced she was quitting the paper to become a deputy editor under Lipman, along with the Times's Jim Impoco. (We all know how that ended.) So, two relatively high-profile hires.

In April 2006, it was reported that David Carey was staffing up the ad-sales side of things; Carey also announced that he expected the mag to be "fully staffed," on both the business and editorial sides, by Thanksgiving of that year.

At this point, also, recall that Condé Nast was still deciding on a name, which in itself was a way to drum up press. So a story was planted in WWD on a Thursday in June 2006 announcing that the magazine was really close to deciding on a name, which would be announced the following Monday. Ah, the suspense!

As promised, on Sunday, June 4, 2006 (in time for Monday deadlines!), Condé sent out a press release announcing that, yes, the magazine had a name! It would be called Portfolio. Also, this:

Condé Nast Portfolio will feature the high caliber of writing, photography, and design that readers of Condé Nast magazines have come to expect. Early circulation efforts will capitalize on the company s newsstand authority, and will also take advantage of Conde Nast's existing relationship with millions of top management readers, as well as the database of American City Business Journals, a unit of Advance Publications.

The next day, there was more coy "we don't know what the magazine will be about" stuff in the Post, except that as we pointed out, "Maybe the tab was tuned to the wrong station? Because the Times, Women's Wear, and Mediaweek somehow manage to get some details on that editorial thrust." Buzz! Let's create some!

Finally, there's the whole thing about other publications perhaps engaging in just a touch of schadenfreude, since Portfolio made so much noise every time the mag stole a reporter or editor. Take the June 23, 2006 announcement about former Time reporter Matt Cooper becoming Portfolio's Washington editor (at the time of his hiring, he was working as a Time.com editor):

Matt Cooper has been named Washington Editor of Conde Nast Portfolio, it was announced today by Joanne Lipman, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. His appointment is effective in September.

"Matt is one of the most brilliant political minds in the business," Ms. Lipman said. "He has also been an inspiration to journalists everywhere and we are delighted to have him as part of our team."

Conde Nast's Portfolio Is Reaching A Point of No Return [Marketwatch]

It couldn't have thrilled him that Impoco left the Times to go to Portfolio in the first place; Impoco's firing would only cement his opinion of Lipman. (We're going with "controlling bitch.")

Earlier, we noted that there seem to be two prevailing impressions of what went wrong between Impoco and Lipman. But we'd like to propose the not-so-radical idea that these two impressions (Impoco is "pugnacious," says Lipman's camp; Lipman "thinks she is 100 percent right, 100 percent of the time," says an Impoco defender), are not mutually exclusive. (Crazy, right?) Two very opinionated, and not very tactful, people coming into conflict. When one of them is the boss, and regards being the boss as being the Imperial Lord, things are going to get ugly.

Still, this is a man who, when he was at the Times, was known to call people's ideas "fucking stupid" in meetings, a source tells us. Sigh. Our fragile egos could never take such abuse! But we hear they do things differently over in the "old media."

From the Lipman camp:

Even supporters of Mr. Impoco will use words like "pugnacious," in describing him, and one staffer said that he had been "sparring publicly" with Ms. Lipman for some time.
In a recent editorial meeting, Mr. Impoco harshly challenged her, belittling one of her story ideas as "breathless." As one staffer said: "I think the people who are not the greatest fans of the boss were taken aback by that."

And few fail to mention Mr. Impoco's support of Kurt Eichenwald, the embattled investigative reporter who spent two decades at The New York Times before joining Portfolio a year ago.

Lipman's management problems are said to be deeper than just a personality clash with Impoco.

One source said that she has never put out a magazine before and doesn't seem to have clear ideas of what she wants. And while she has many veterans across the editorial, design and photo departments, she doesn't defer to anyone.

"She thinks she is 100 percent right, 100 percent of the time," said one insider, who said the disaffection runs deep. "She just isn't very collegial. The dissatisfaction is spread across all departments."

That said, she is not prone to shouting matches or temper tantrums.

"It's definitely a Captain Bligh thing going on, but she has that permanent Joker smile," said the insider, referring to both the taciturn captain from the book "Mutiny on the Bounty," who was tossed over board by his crew, and to one of Batman's foes.

The website's tagline is "Breaking Business News and Opinion, Executive Profiles and Careers." So what did they break today? There's a piece about Hugo Chavez forcing oil companies out of Venezuela; a much longer and thoughtful piece ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. There's a perfunctory (330 words) update about the Rupert Murdoch-Dow Jones takeover. There's an article about business spending that essentially summarizes a Bloomberg article about the same thing, and another about the Bear Stearns hedge fund bailout that's also a takeaway from a Bloomberg piece. Their fifth lead story is about the pricing plans for the iPhone, with zero analysis or new insight—just a list of prices and features. There's nothing terrible really. None of these are must-reads, or unique stories that the average business executive hasn't already read when he picks up his WSJ in the morning.

Also on the front page today is a story about art market hedge funds, including The Art Trading Fund, which isn't that dissimilar from that outfit's mention in the Economist last month.

And as the magazine spends the next month closing its second issue, are any of the staff writers going to have stories for the web? Not likely. It's like a more serious version of the Radar effect: The more stressful the magazine closing, the less content there is on the website.

Okay. So the Breaking Business News is a wash. How about those much-vaunted bloggers? Well, a couple of them are doing some decent stuff. Veteran technology writer Kevin Maney, who used to write a tech blog on USAToday.com, has a serviceable general-interest technology blog, but it's a far cry from anything you can find on, say, Wired.com. Felix Salmon seems to be updating his Market Movers finance blog the most out of any of the Portfolio bloggers, and it's probably the best one on there. Matt Cooper's politics blog is, surprisingly, mostly a snore, and Lauren Goldstein Crowe's fashion blog suffers in comparison to the others out there. Or to reading Lucky.

What should be a huge red flag, though, is that almost none of the posts—on any of the blogs—are getting comments. Are the bloggers writing into a void? Each post has a big orange link to "Start the Conversation" at the bottom, but no one seems to be taking them up on the offer.

Salmon didn't seem particularly troubled by this when we spoke to him yesterday. "I absolutely don't worry about that," he said. "The way I'm looking at it at the moment is that if people feel like they have something to add to what I'm saying, then leave a comment." Blog posts, Salmon said, are not edited, and bloggers have freedom to write about whatever they want.

Most of Condé Nast's magazine's websites fall under the umbrella of the company's online division, CondéNet—to the growing displeasure of some magazine staffers, who resent the control CondéNet has over their magazines' sites. But Portfolio's website is an experiment: It's managed by Portfolio, and not by CondéNet. Still, the print magazine and the website have little crossover; insiders say that magazine editor Joanne Lipman is almost entirely hands-off, leaving the operation of the website to managing editor Chris Jones, who was a reporter and editor at Wired and Yahoo before coming over to Portfolio.

"The magazine had months of people sitting around and working on it," Salmon told us. "With the website, they were basically hiring people at launch. It was all very last-minute." Hence, beta! Of course, that's a slightly odd state of affairs; the original announcement about the launch of the magazine, in August 2005, included the information that there would be a website that Lipman and publisher David Carey would be developing.

The website still has some kinks—in addition to the uneven content—to work out. "The site will be cleaned up," a source at the magazine told us. "Right now it's hard to find some stuff." There are also little things that make us think that no one's minding the store; the five articles on the Most Emailed Stories list were all published at the beginning of May, which raises two questions: Is that feature broken? Or is no one reading the site? (Also, letting Portfolio contributor Deborah Schoeneman pimp Hampton Style, which she's editing, on the site is pretty tacky.)

According to Portfolio spokeswoman Perri Dorset, the website will be moved out of beta in September, when the second issue of the magazine comes out, and at that time several new features (she declined to say what they were) would also be rolled out.

The website's advertising structure mimics the print magazine's; according to Dorset, the website sold 10 packages "for this first beta testing" period, from April to September, and advertising for the fall is being sold now. "People are very interested," she said.

Traffic information would not be available until September, Dorset said. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the website did not hit Nielsen's reporting threshold of 360,000 unique visitors in May. By comparison, neither did business-related websites like Dealbreaker.com and TraderDaily.com. More established sites include Forbes.com, which pulled in over 6.4 million uniques in May, while BusinessWeek Online had just over 2.3 million unique visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

What kind of magazine did they need to do? In June 2006, Lipman told the New York Times: ''This is serious business journalism—investigative, narrative, profiles—a commitment to long-form journalism, and telling that story with great design and art. This is not a lifestyle publication. This is a business publication.''

But that's not entirely what came out.

Lipman—who had worked at the Wall Street Journal since she was 22—has never worked in magazines before, which rankles some of her staff. "There is a group of editors who are very unhappy with Joanne and feel like she sort of doesn't 'get' magazines and isn't being very creative," said a magazine staffer. "She doesn't get magazines to the point where her judgment on writers isn't very good and her assignments are questionable."

And the biggest gripe seems to be that the magazine may be paying lip service to being "serious business journalism," but its first issue doesn't fulfill that mandate. "It's totally wrong for the audience it's going for," said the source close to the magazine. "They want to know deals. They want information that they can't get anywhere else. The Observer article said the magazine provides no narrative—they don't tell you how the money was made. And almost every single article in the first issue is tainted—there's lifestyle or pop culture dragged into it. The [hedge fund manager Ken] Griffin story is all about his art collection. The audience would rather read about the merger of two steel companies!"

This source added, "The bottom line is, there's nothing in the magazine that is quote-unquote 'compelling' if you're a business executive. There's nothing in there that you need to know."

But does that necessarily spell doom for Portfolio? Without circ, newsstand, or ad revenue numbers, it's hard to gauge if the first issue did, indeed, flop. And according to another source at the magazine, "Si Newhouse was thrilled" with the debut issue. "We still get to have a big budget, and we hear a lot of good things from people in the industry."

This same staffer is also less convinced of an imminent staff mutiny. "I think [Lipman] had a very strong view about what the magazine should be that some of the senior editors didn't agree with, and perhaps they were frustrated with what they perceived as a lack of listening, and her handing down directives," this source says.

Indeed, another staff member adds, "My sense about these kinds of editors is that they have to have huge egos and be imperious to get over this first part."

One of Lipman's two deputy editors, Amy Stevens, is her longtime colleague from the WSJ, where Lipman, Stevens, and Laurie Cohen—who returned to the WSJ after two months at Portfolio—were a clique "in a similar way that Jill Abramson, Maureen Dowd, and Alessandra Stanley are a clique at the New York Times," says one former WSJ staffer.

"I think morale at the magazine in general is good," says another Portfolio staffer. "That might be because it's a launch, and there's momentum and excitement—but also, everyone's treated well. And there's very little hierarchy. Joanne will make calls, and some senior editors might have had issues, but generally the staff is harmonious."

We're also told that Eichenwald is steamed that Portfolio editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman won't let him resell the piece. Her reasoning is that he shouldn't because the magazine is paying him so well for his work. "He's pissed," a source at the magazine said.

It's a tense time at Portfolio in general, report staffers. The next issue, dated September, is ramping up for a late July close.

Eichenwald is still under contract to the magazine, but there's speculation among staffers that the magazine is hoping he'll just leave quietly on his own accord. We imagine the lawyer-happy fella would undoubtedly not respond well to his contract being broken.

I've now had most of Portfolio shown to me and, of course, scanned your memo about the look of it and the concept of it a couple times. I really wonder whether you realize what you and your associates have achieved in the relatively short time (when you're my age a year and a half seems like a mere minute) that you've Worked on it: well, this first issue of Portfolio is a real wonder... heavy, Shiny, ad-rich and everything that we imagined it might be at our first lunch (now so well-documented by everyone you've told about it). I'm absolutely delighted And proud of your City of Gold inauguration of Portfolio. What A way to start! It makes all the times I've been Forced to whore my self out to Press people in an attempt to garner Publicity for this multi-million Dollar sinkhole well worth it! You are doing such a Great job, Joanne. Please keep this e-mail Confidential: I would hate for it to somehow "leak" to the press and cause a flurry of "Si Really Loves Portfolio" memos. Okay, Must dash; Graydon's written a letter from me of his Own that I need to sign off on. Si

Inside that cover, there are a healthy eleven pages of ads before Lipman's Editor's Letter, ranging from the stolid (GE, Chevron, Fidelity, etc.) to the sexy (BMW, Visa's line of luxury cards). Lipman's letter is almost aggressively boastful about the vapidity of the content that you'll find within the book; Portfolio is apparently the brilliant girl in high school who acted dumb to attract the boys. "Today's 24/7 news cycle bombards us with information but gives us less time to process it," says Lipman, who notes that:

We chose a monthly frequency for Cond Nast Portfolio so we can offer you deep dives into important subjects, providing you with the most compelling—and most useful—information. After this issue, we take a break and begin publishing monthly with our September issue.

After a three page Ralph Lauren spread we come to the Table of Contents page. As is this case with most upmarket titles aimed (ideally!) at people who want to have something to flip through while their driver hies them to Teterboro, the T.O.C. is broken up by ad pages. We pass by Rolex (one page), Armani (spread), Canon (spread), Travelers Insurance (spread), hit the second page of the T.O.C., and then it's a Hermes one pager and a Cartier spread to take us to the Contents' conclusion. We're certainly feeling an urge to consume! Up next is a foldout ad for Grey Goose. We're certainly feeling an urge to become incredibly drunk! There's an ad for Think Tank ("an exclusive forum for Conde Nast Portfolio readers to share their thinking") that directs you to the Portfolio website, where you can join this virtual community. (Sure, Conde may be shelling out upwards of $100 million on a new print mag, but they get the Web.) Calvin Klein has a three page ad, Van Heusen is in for one, DeBeers takes a spread, Portfolio.com gets another plug (they get the Web), IBM has four pages and then, lo and behold, there's an ad for Portfolio.com (they get the Web)! A two page Prudential "Red Zone" ad follows and looks like nothing so much as a promo for Old Spice.

And then is something called "Photo Genesis." It's about how "the biggest names in business can be tricky to photograph," presumably because they are all vampires for whom sunlight represents the ultimate enemy. Is this section some kind of contributor's page for the photogs? Probably! FedEx is in for a page, Goldman Sachs gets a spread to show how much they love developing countries, which they illustrate with eight pictures of children who will no doubt be adopted by Angelina Jolie in the immediate future. Hyatt Place—a new hotel designed around you—takes a spread. BlackBerry's got a single-pager starring the CEO of Capital Management Group.

Then it's the second page of Photo Genesis. Look, there's Tom Wolfe! And Bill Ford! Also, business people only ask for one photographer by name: Annie Leibovitz. Why? She's the only one they've ever heard of.

Cargill goes for a spread and then we reach the Index of Companies and People mentioned in the magazine, which is presumably placed here to remind you that there's some sort of business element to the book. The index is, of course, interspersed with more ads (four pages for Ameriprise Financial), but we did note that Conde Nast is not included. David Geffen gets three mentions, apparently, and Peter Guber one. We're starting to get a better idea of what the magazine is about.

Banana Republic has a spread—the pastels make our eyes happy—and then it's the masthead. Let's give a random shout-out to Art Assistant Paloma Shutes as we whiz by. CreditSuisse has a foldout ad, which is backed by THe FILe, "events + promotions + news from our advertisers." Um, what the hell else has the magazine been thus far? Ermenegildo Zegna does four pages, in two of which well-dressed gentlemen are shown reading the Financial Times. Ooh, showing a real business publication in the pages of Portfolio. This magazine is ballsy!

The second page of THe FILe directs you to, yes, Portfolio.com (who gets the Web?). An Omega watch ad surrounds the business masthead, and this time we're gonna give a wave to Events Director Elise Mehrige. Lincoln takes four pages, CA gets one and then... Contributors!

This is an odd layout. The writers are shown on a map of the world with datelines underneath their names signifying where they reported from. It's a little jarring:

Gabriel Sherman
NAPLES, FLORIDA

looks like a nametag you'd see on a server at an Applebees. (Also, Gabriel Sherman looks kind of like Macaulay Culkin if he were just about to be molested by Tom Wolfe, which, for all we know, may be the plot of Home Alone 5.)

Samsung, John Hardy and UBS account for four pages, and then we get "MAY AGENDA," which, at page 87, can be fairly said to be the first piece of real content in the magazine. Our first impression is that we have mistakenly picked up the world's heaviest New York: there's something about the layout and line art that feel vaguely Mossian. But what's on the calendar? The Kentucky Derby's on May 5th, and there's "speculation that Queen Elizabeth II will be on hand." There's a gala for the Met on the 7th. The iPhone launches in June, but we'll not see another Portfolio until September, so best to cram it in now. (Incidentally, this counts as one of the two mentions of Steve Jobs in this issue, if the Index is at all accurate.) There's a goofy icon of the Google boys (shareholders' meeting on the 10th, y'all!), and then it's back to the ads.

Four-page foldout for Accenture featuring Tiger Woods. THe FILe gets another page. 650 Sixth Avenue—the first piece of real estate advertising we've seen thus far!— does a one-pager. It's "gallery style condominium living," which sounds incredibly hip and happening. Plus it's right near The Container Store! Northwestern Mutual does a spread, Patek Philippe has one page, and now we're at brief. The magazine may actually be starting for real this time!

Stick with us, we're not doing this for ourselves!

Brief is: "WHO'S DOING WHAT TO WHOM AND WHY." Wow, that's Us Weekly's mission statement too! Apparently this is the "front of book." Jesse Eisinger does a bit on how private equity firms are doing such gigantic deals that they can no longer avoid scrutiny. It's broken up by a Xerox spread, so we sort of lost the thread in the middle, but there's half-page graphy/charty thing on the other side that, again, looks like it came out of New York.

After an Intel ad we get a brief interview with Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin. (Kudos to the editors for going with "Siriusly Speaking" rather than "The Karmazin' Race.") Mel claims to have learned "nothing good" from former employer Sumner Redstone. Interviewer Nancy Hass asks some toughish questions, but stuff like "You are a man with an urge to merge" doesn't exactly go for the jugular. Below the interview is a photo-laden timeline that could have come from Radar, Spy or Vanity Fair, actually.

Microsoft has a page, and then there's a photospread on the ad people who will make the big decisions at the television upfronts. Unilever's Laura Klauberg has nice legs. A Microsoft spread following up on the previous ad gives way to a page on architecture ("Mine's Bigger") that is both chart and list on the "ridiculous race to build the world's tallest building." Canali has a page. The next page has a cartoon! It's about corporate-cafeteria health-code violations! (Advertiser Credit Suisse, as well as Newsweek and Verizon get mentions, but there is nothing about the Conde caf, which we're sure is spotless.)

There's a then-and-now charticle (So many entry points!) concerning Bubble 2.0 (FAVORITE POL: Then: Bill, Now: Hillary. You get the idea). After another page of THe FILe, there's a humorous collection of real excuses corporations made for not meeting estimates, which is slightly less amusing when you realize that the item atop it is all about MINING DEATHS. Well, we guess they both do fall under the "WORKPLACE" rubric.

Nic Cage is selling Montblanc watches? What, they couldn't find anyone creepier? Anyway, that ad is followed up by a four-page Merrill Lynch thing. Their slogan is "TOTAL MERILL" which seems an odd choice when it's placed directly next to a giant bull. Anyway. There's a full spread about China's preparation for the 2008 Olympics, which mainly consists of a giant picture of the still-under-construction stadium. Helpful logos at bottom bring you information about how much steel is being used, daily worker pay, etc.

Porsche has an ad spread. There's a page about exit compensation that tries to muster some outrage about the giant sums given to underperforming executives upon their departure that would be more convincing were it not placed aside an ad for Audemars Piguet watches, which are apparently made for the rich executive with Asperger's. That ad continues on for three more pages, and is followed by an ad from Portfolio.com thanking its "digital partners" for "embracing innovation."

"THE LAST WORD" in brief is an Alexandra "Daughter of Tom" Wolfe piece on "the past year's most extravagant bar and bat mitzvahs." As our co-editor Emily said, "I remember reading 'there are lavish bar mitzvahs' articles when i was PREPARING FOR MY BAT MITZVAH. And they had better headlines." (This one is called "Mazel Top This," so we're inclined to agree.) Still, you're not going to see pictures of Snoop Dogg and Liza Minnelli in fusty old Forbes, are you?

We don't read Forbes, so that's an actual question.

Burberry: One page. Mass Mutual: a spread. And, here we go. Columnists. John Cassidy tackles Economics (Global warming might not be as bad as we think, economists say. Oh do they.) Jesse Eisenger covers Wall Street (Will derivatives fuck up the market? Maybe not! But probably!). At this point we're just gonna stop counting the ads unless there's something really sexy or egregious, but trust us, there's one on every other page. We're not sure what they're charging over at Conde, but even if it's pennies they've probably already earned out on that 100-million-dollar investment.

Gabriel Sherman (NAPLES, FLORIDA) profiles Bruce Sherman (no relation). Sherman's the CEO of Private Capital Management, and he's got newspaper owners everywhere pissing in their Ermenegildo Zegna trousers (wow, those ads really work!) as he tries to destroy the industry force news conglomerates to become more efficient through the bullying tactic we currently refer to as "shareholder activism." Sherman has already been successful in forcing Knight Ridder to sell itself off. Now he's teaming up with Morgan Stanley's Hasan Elmasry in an attempt to do the same to the New York Times Company. (Good luck with that. No seriously, good luck!) This is a lengthy, detailed profile that may be of interest to the casual reader who knows little about mysterious asset managers who are trying to change the way newspapers focus on their bottom lines. Not being among such we cannot judge it on its merits, but again, long and detailed. So points for that.

Sheelah Kolhatkar wonders why there aren't more women making the deals for private equity firms. (Answer: Men are bad.) It's a spread with a big picture of the six women who apparently have made it in the man's world, and there's a chart on the following page of the men who run the show. We don't really follow finance all that closely and we still feel like we knew everything in this piece. Still, it's mercifully brief, so we're giving the same amount of points that we did to the Sherman thing.

Michael Lewis, who made his name writing about finance and then revitalized his career by writing a book about finance as it pertains to sports, has an article about sports finance. It's a little logo-heavy, but so long as he's not writing about his children, we've always found Lewis extremely readable. You could do worse!

Special four-page Mark Ecko advertorial supplement. The sound you hear is us skipping over the pages with the celerity of Paul Rubens at a masturbation contest. Kolhatkar returns with a piece on Ken Griffin, "hedge fund wunderkind." It starts off with this: "The people who run hedge funds, as everyone knows, are tight-lipped." We did know that! You know who else is tight-lipped? Bruce Sherman, asset manager. Still, he talked to Portfolio, just like Ken Griffin, who untightened his lips long enough to talk about his wife and his art collection. Will he take Citadel, his hedge fund, public? "It's a strategic option." We feel somehow less informed.

Someone should tell the people who do print ads for Loews Hotels that color photographs superimposed over silver tint makes for a jarring, hideous ad.

"Behind the Green Doerr" is an article about John Doerr, a venture capitalist who wants to help the environment or something. We refuse to read any more articles about "green" anything—seriously, fuck the environment—so we can't evaluate this one, but it begins with Bono, which may give you some idea of where it goes.

Art! There's an art piece! It's about Marianne Boesky, the daughter of Ivan, whom older readers may remember as Wall Street's 80's symbol of greed gone wild. This one is sort of interesting. Also the art industry can be as cut-throat as the financial industry. We're going to go back and really read this one later. Also, it seems like Mike Ovitz comes off as a dick, which is always enjoyable.

Former Time writer Matt Cooper is still working his fifteen minutes of Plame. Matt was so totally ready to go to prison over the leak of the CIA agent's identity, right up until the moment where he spilled everything to stay out of jail. Best line: "As [Judy] Miller was hauled off to jail and I was let go, I told her to stay strong." Ever the comedian, we don't doubt that Cooper added something about not bending down for the soap.

There's a ten-page Lexus ad. If nothing else this magazine makes you realize how little money you have in your savings account. Or, we suppose, how much.

Here we are at page 227. We're in the final third of the damn thing now. It's culture | inc. (WHERE art MEETS commerce). Quick piece, complete with charticle, on the ins-and-outs of arts patronage. Alexandra Wolfe looks at the Chinese art market: Is it inflated? Some say yes! Others are unsure! A little infobox with five contemporary Chinese artists adds value, we guess. Investing in the theater: It's a risky proposition! Eileen Daspin introduces you to some folks who think that Legally Blonde: The Musical will somehow help cover their nut. Graphical box included for your pleasure. "DECONSTRUCTED PROGRAM" does the annotated document thing so popular with editors these days. Portfolio chooses to examine who's funding the Seattle Symphony. The answers may surprise you, particularly if you don't know anything about Seattle. Or the Symphony. Or people who might care about those two things in combination.

Level Vodka ad. Mmm. Vodka.

How is Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons helping to turn around the fortunes of the struggling Apollo Theater? A photicle (you know, the big picture accompanied by the small, numbered line art drawing that tells you who everyone is) may provide the answers!

There's a piece about the private equity/asset management guys who own Octone Records, which is responsible for Maroon 5. Bastards. Also, "This Love" is now stuck in our head. MOTHERFUCKERS.

Now it's THE GOLD Standard, Portfolio's Strategist. Things you should buy your rich fat ass this month: Tennis rackets, cameras, watches, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, a book about our inability to accept that life is essentially random. Having waded this far through Portfolio we are entirely convinced. A few capsule book reviews trail after.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct your attention to page 267, where Tom Wolfe examines the NEW MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Guess what? They're hedge fund managers! Do you like Tom Wolfe writing about rich people? Then go buy Portfolio, because he's doing it some more in this issue.

What else! The ruler of Dubai likes horsies. Horsie dynasty graphic included. Is Ford fucked? We're not sure, the article jumps to the back. Eira Thomas is a Canadian diamond mining magnate who is styled in green gown and mining boots. She lives in two different worlds! John Hockenberry wants you to know that if you pay taxes you are helping to fund the military/industrial complex. Ryan Kavanaugh is some red-headed 32-year-old standing on the corner where Hollywood meets Wall Street. (This one might actually be interesting, we see Harvey Weinstein barking in it.) Harry Hurt III writes about someone other than himself for once: Texas legend T. Boone Pickens. Oh, look, here's the rest of that Ford piece. Yeah, it's probably fucked. We're almost there! Look, an ad for Portfolio.com on your mobile! (They get the etc.) Okay, back page! It's "the demystifier." It's a charticle explaining the credit default swap. We still don't get it. Final ad: four page Cadillac foldout.

So, Portfolio? Honestly, this really is the Vanity Fair for the finance set. With the resources they're planning to pour into it, we don't doubt it'll survive for a couple years at least. Is it a good magazine? That depends! If you think Vanity Fair and New York are good magazines—and many people seem to—then, yes, you will find this a good magazine. By the standards of Manhattan, it certainly reeks of overclass success: fat, healthy, holding up a glass of high-end vodka with a $15,000 watch weighing down each wrist. —balk