Categories: OLD Media Moves

PR guy: Portfolio is dead on arrival

Steve Cody, managing partner and co-founder of Peppercom, one of the nationâ€™s largest independent public relations firms, writes on his RepMan blog that the new business magazine Conde Nast Portfolio is in trouble from the start, based on his experience in doing PR for other new business-related magazines.

Cody wrote, “Truth be told, I haven’t spent time reading all 300 pages, but I can assure Conde Nast that there’s at least one business reader who can’t and won’t attempt to familiarize himself with Portfolio. And, my gut tells me I’ll be the norm in this case, not the exception.

“Having provided publicity support for at least four failed magazines I can think of (Shock, Individual Investor, Financial World and Tele.com), I know that content alone isn’t enough to break through in a crowded space. To succeed, Portfolio would have to be dramatically different from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune and countless others. Instead, it seems from reviews that the text is ‘more of the same.’

“As I’ve said in the past, all the publicity and marketing in the world can’t fix a broken model. And, in my mind, Portfolio is dead on arrival. The ‘body’ may linger for a while, but I wouldn’t shift any money in my own portfolio betting on its success.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.