Portfolio trying to live up to the hype

Meanwhile, Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman argues that Conde Nast Portfolio will have to be impressive in its first issue if it hopes to live up to its hype.

Friedman, who has visited the magazine’s offices twice in recent weeks, wrote, “Portfolio is, in a way, a victim of the modern media biz. Bloggers want to outshout one another; critics invariably find fault with anything. In a period when gossip is king, new rules can apply: Money is dirty. Ambition is something to be mocked. Give nobody the benefit of the doubt.

“Naturally, Portfolio is being covered like a big-budget Hollywood movie partly because it carries an estimated $100 million price tag (covering a span of many years). Even beyond its David Beckham connotation, critics have pounced on Conde Nast for having the chutzpah to roll out a monthly business magazine, while seasoned financial publications have been struggling for years to find new advertisers and readers.

“The Portfolio brass counters the hecklers by whispering reassuredly: They’re just jealous. At Conde Nast, they seem to think, we’re the smartest, best-educated, wittiest, best-paid journalists around. We’re special. That kind of elitism tends to grate on the so-called have-nots in the image-conscious New York media circles.

“The gossip mongers love it when Conde Nast looks bad. The other day, the New York Post’s Page Six took pains to give noogies to the company’s New Yorker, after it somehow confused the revered American poet Robert Frost with British chat-show host David Frost. Would any other magazine have been singled out? Probably not.”

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