Conde Nast Portfolio hires web editor

Conde Nast Portfolio, the new business magazine being started next year to compete against Fortune, Forbes and BusinessWeek, has hired away the director of programming of Yahoo! Finance to run its Web site, which will also launch next year, according to a brief in Women’s Wear Daily.

Stephanie Smith wrote, “YahooFinance veteran Chris Jones will join the business magazine Sept. 12 as managing editor, Web. Jones spent four years at Yahoo, where he most recently was director of programming, and worked at Hot Jobs for two years prior to Yahoo’s acquisition of the job-search portal. Jones is the third Portfolio hire from Yahoo, following Ari Brandt and Scott Havens, who are helping division president David Carey on the business side.

“Although Jones is charged with keeping the business monthly competitive with other financial news properties, from blogs and Web sites to weekly financial titles, he was seduced in part by Portfolio’s mock-up covers. ‘They were really captivating photos, those I haven’t seen on another business magazine,’ said Jones. ‘There’s a huge opportunity to do something new, in this case something new and visually exciting that tells a story about how business is done. The mission of the publication and also the ability to build a Web site from the ground up are very exciting.’

“Not that Jones has an easy task. Chuck Townsend, chief executive officer of Condé Nast Publications (which also owns WWD), has said he wants to turn Portfolio’s site into ‘a major Web presence.’ While Jones, naturally, has not yet mapped out how he’ll translate the feel of the magazine to the Web — since there is no magazine yet — he did predict the future site would not look anything like his former employer’s home page. ‘But it will be a best of breed Web site, like Yahoo,’ he promised.”

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