Portfolio editor's mother amused by the attention

Conde Nast Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman told a group of Columbia University journalism students that she’s been surprised at the attention the new business magazine has garnered, writes John Koblin of the New York Observer.

Koblin wrote, “Ms. Lipman briefly touched on the well-publicized controversy Portfolio has faced in its first year by saying: ‘I have to say I found the attention to really, really be a head-scratcher.’

“Condé Nast, she explained, is different because when you run a start-up there you suddenly become a bold-faced name with some ‘extraordinary, colorful epithets’ attached to your name, though her mother in New Jersey finds it all pretty amusing.

“She explained the high level of turnover at the magazine thusly: ‘Some people were hardcore business journalists. And then other people, who were great magazine journalists, had zero business experience. So it was not always a comfortable mix. Not everybody worked out. We took people out of their comfort zones.'”

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