The Business of Magazines

[Bertrando3]

Alt's Vogue Paris vision was boring, repetitive and way too jeans focused LOL so I'm happy they fired her. Just this sentence alone clearly shows what I think: ''A noted fashion stylist, Alt was named editor-in-chief in 2011 when she succeeded Carine Roitfeld, after spending seven years as her deputy. However, her tenure was more noted for its longevity than its creativity. In fact, both Roitfeld and the previous incumbent, Joan Juliet Buck, were seen to have edited far more visionary magazines.''

However I agree: it's shocking to see someone as talent-less like Farneti stay over good editors of Vogue international editions. I have to say though this new transformation of Vogue titles across the world is interesting to watch. I have said it MANY TIMES: the future of print is not bright and I am sure many Vogue titles will disappear forever with this new CEO's plan.

 

[Rigida]

What Conde does is dramatic but it's inevitable. Print magazine is like CDs/DVDs now.. over time it will become obsolete and only become a niche product. They can't keep the old business model. I believe they already have long term plan for this. Previously it was print first then digital (with print content appeared on their website weeks after the magazine is released), now its the other way around.. we already see the print magazine contents on their website even before the magazine hits the news stand.

I feel that over time, they will start closing the regional Vogue (or other titles) websites too.. and in the end they will only have like 1 or 2 "Main" Vogue website (presumably US Vogue and Vogue China) with all global contents consolidated into one website.

It's sad.. i'm not even sure if we are still going to see any print issues of Conde titles in the next decade, the days of their print products is certainly numbered.

 

[THD96]

EIC of Porter Magazine Sarah Bailey will leave the magazine to join Vogue Greece.

 

[thekijken]

EIC of Porter Magazine Sarah Bailey will leave the magazine to join Vogue Greece.

she was doing a good job, printed Porter used to be a very readable magazine. you can tell by how many ppl are requesting the magazine to be printed again in the comment section

 

[caioherrero]

Left Net a porter for a International at large job in Vogue Greece, are they paying more?

 

[aracic]

Not sure how much of a score this is conisdering the whole CN Europe thing, but Porter Magazine truly was amazing. Can't say I'm too familiar with the contents of Vogue Greece, but they do produce interesting covers/cover stories that we see on here and I'd love to see what else they have to offer - especially now.

 

[axiomatic]

In other CN news

Condé Nast plans September return to 1WTC amid rent dispute

Conde Nast, the glitziest squatter in the city, plans to start paying rent again — sort of.

The publisher of high-end glossies like Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker plans to bring a “majority” of its workers back to its 1 World Trade Center headquarters by September, the company has said.

And it’s started paying rent again as a result, Media Ink has learned — even as it continues to withhold the roughly $10 million it currently owes in back rent.

Conde’s rent dispute with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the tower, first emerged in January when the Wall Street Journal reported that its parent company, Advance Publications, had withheld $2.4 million in unpaid rent.

Now, according to WWD, that figure has ballooned to $9.6 million as Conde negotiates for a rent reduction.

The Port Authority, in confirming the rent dispute, seemed to suggest no such discount would be forthcoming.

”The companies responsible for this lease have billions of dollars in assets, yet they have unilaterally withheld rent without any legal justification,” said a representative for the Port Authority. “These companies are entirely capable of satisfying their legal obligations and the Port Authority believes it has strong contractual rights to enforce full payment.”

Prior to the rent kerfuffle, Conde had been mulling a move out of WTC, as The Post reported last year.

It scouted for cheaper digs in Midtown Manhattan, where it was previously based, sources told The Post. The company also looked at office rentals along the New Jersey waterfront with the idea of splitting workers up between two sites, according to a report in Bloomberg earlier this year.

Conde, which had 1.2 million square feet in the tower prior to the pandemic, has also been trying to sublease some of the floors it rented on a lease that has about 20 years remaining.

Given the depressed real estate market in Manhattan, Advance feels it’s paying well above the market rate for the prime building, sources said.

Advance is a privately held media conglomerate controlled by the billionaire Newhouse family that owns 25 percent of Discovery–now in the process of merging with Warner Media. It also has a substantial stake in Reddit.

While sources say Conde is losing money, its influential parent company has spent lavishly on acquisitions in recent years, including a reported $1.75 billion in 2019 for the educational software company Turnitin, which uses artificial intelligence to scan for plagiarism.

In March 2020, Advance dropped a reported $730 million to buy the Ironman Group, a triathlon sporting events company.

A spokeswoman for Conde Nast said of the rent flap, “What is at issue here is the continued dispute between Advance and 1WTC landlord.”

“We’re going to be offering a variety of solutions to our workforce – some hybrid, some fully remote and the majority will be back working from our office in September,” said the spokesperson.

A spokesman for the Durst Organization, which manages the building for the Port Authority, confirmed that Advance has agreed to start paying rent again (perhaps to ensure the landlord won’t turn the electricity off after Labor Day).

“Advance is currently paying its full rent,” said a spokesman for Durst. “We are in discussions with the firm over its arrears.”

 

[axiomatic]

Stefano Tonchi, Condé Nast Lawsuit Update – WWD

Almost two years after former W editor in chief Stefano Tonchi first filed a lawsuit against Condé Nast’s parent company Advance Magazine Publications, the case is still ongoing — but there have been some recent developments.

For a quick recap, in June 2019, Tonchi filed a breach of contract suit against Advance seeking a little more than $1 million in damages, claiming he was wrongfully terminated one day after the oversize glossy fashion publication was sold to Surface Media. (It has since changed hands again and is currently published by W Media in partnership with BDG thanks to a gaggle of celebrity investors led by model Karlie Kloss, who came to its rescue in the middle of the pandemic.)

Tonchi, now consulting creative officer at L’Officiel, claimed in the suit against Advance that he was terminated “for cause,” and would not receive any of the pay laid out in his employment or closing bonus agreements, adding that the company “did not provide any facts that constituted cause.”

Two months later, Condé Nast hit back with a countersuit accusing Tonchi of interfering with the sale of W in order to benefit himself. It later withdrew two of its counterclaims against Tonchi — breach of confidentiality and breach of employment agreement — in order to keep secret details about W’s business and previously interested buyers, but kept two of its counterclaims, which Tonchi subsequently asked a judge to dismiss.

Recently, that judge — New York State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen — came back with an answer, granting Tonchi’s motion to dismiss Advance’s counterclaims for breach of fiduciary duty, but denying his motion to dismiss the claim for breach of the duty of loyalty/faithless servant, leaving Advance with just one counterclaim, compared with four in 2019.

On the breach of fiduciary duty counterclaim, Cohen noted that it “must be dismissed because it fails to adequately plead that defendants suffered any compensable harm.” Part of this no doubt stems from Advance not wanting to disclose certain details about the sale process surrounding W.

“There is no indication in the counterclaims, for instance, about what sort of ‘damage control’ the AMPI Sales Team deployed in response to Tonchi’s actions. Nor do the counterclaims touch on any ‘future transactions’ which could be impacted by Tonchi’s conduct,” he said in court documents.

As for breach of the duty of loyalty, where Tonchi is alleged to have acted disloyally in the W sale process, elevating his own interests at the expense of Advance, he referred to three allegations. The first is Advance alleging that Tonchi disclosed confidential information to potential buyers without notice to Advance, as well as blocking a potential buyer’s attempts to meet with senior members of W’s editorial team in order to minimize the importance of other W staff members, so that he could appear indispensable to the potential buyer.

Advance also alleged that Tonchi jeopardized the sale to Surface by disparaging Surface and its chief executive officer Marc Lotenberg to other W employees and encouraging W employees not to work for the media company.

“Together, these allegations are sufficient to state a cause of action for breach of duty of loyalty, including a claim for disgorgement of previously paid compensation during the period of disloyalty under the faithless servant doctrine,” Cohen concluded.

It’s understood that at this stage of the case the evidence has yet to be reviewed.

Lani Adler, Tonchi’s lawyer, told WWD: “I am confident that based on the evidence which consists of the documents that the parties have exchanged based on the deposition testimonies of multiple witnesses including Anna Wintour, Bob Sauerberg [former CEO of Condé Nast] and Roger Lynch that Mr. Tonchi will prevail in all respects.”

A representative for Advance did not respond to request for comment.

 

[conspicuousconsumer]

^My goodness how the mighty have fallen...and quite sad really.
Are the Newhouses on drugs or incapacitated? You spend over $2 billion on random junk companies but can’t take care of a $10 million bill for your most important asset not to mention a pantheon of cultural legacies?
Why on earth waste that kind of money on an educational software or two-bit sports company? Condé Nast has really gone downhill since Si Newhouse died and Charles Townsend left.
The more I think about this the more I want to hit something.

 

[YohjiAddict]

Imagine, the poor poor billonaires can't even afford EIC's salaries other than Edward's and Anna's...priorities

 

[Xone]

Condé Nast is doomed....they are gonna destroy what's left....They need to get rid of Anna Wintour asap...those American Vogue issues are embarrassing...

 

[thestylisha]

Magazines continue to decline in popularity. In the age of fast internet, and a growing dependancy on social media, how can print magazines, like Vogue, survive? Will they survive?

Personally, print is forever. It has and will remain unparalleled to any other form of media in the sphere of fashion. But, it is evident that magazines are surrendering to the internet when it comes to creating moments that has enabled it to prevail for so long in the past.

Print will forever have its place, but with magazines becoming lazier in their approach, its place becomes more and more uncertain everyday. I personally would hate to see magazines die, but a part of me already hates what they have become in recent years.

 

[thestylisha]

British Vogue is too wishy washy now. There is little to no direction in the covers, and the articles lacklustre. Conde Nast need to consider the forbidden 'R' word- redesign.

 

[LoveFashion25]

Honestly I've been reading the comments and it makes me wonder what's going on with Conde Nast? They are the pillar of fashion so is Anna Wintour? Honestly this shows me there's need to be a change/overhaul in the industry. I foresee an upcoming fashion expert coming along and change the game in fashion and at Conde Nast.

 

[Lola701]

Condé Nast is doomed....they are gonna destroy what's left....They need to get rid of Anna Wintour asap...those American Vogue issues are embarrassing...

Condé Nast is doomed but Anna is not the issue here.
It’s maybe our issue because we care about the artistic vision but IRL, the issue is more business related in a industry that is forced to change and adapt.

Anna Wintour remains not because her Vogue is fabulous but only because the model she has found for her Vogue to exist in this new era is the most efficient yet.

We are witnessing the end of magazines like we used to know. They have to reinvent themselves.
They won’t get rid of Anna now because Anna is still the Authority of fashion and from her public persona to what she had transformed the Met Gala into, she brings advertisers, celebrities and pushes for contents to be created to somehow make the Vogue brand relevant.

Of Course it’s obvious that Newhouse has a strategy to push Edward closer to the big job but I’m concerned in which strategy he has to maintain his group.

It’s both sad and telling to see how dependent of Anna they are...

 

[LoveFashion25]

The idea of making easy money from producing bland online content under the Vogue banner probably seems really appealing in the boardroom right now - but any power the Vogue brand has, it stems entirely from the important position the print magazine once held and the respect that people accorded it. But when time passes and there's wave after wave of young people who don’t have any memory of the importance of print magazines, those people are not automatically going to see Vogue as the “voice of authority” on anything – Vogue is just going to be yet another heritage logo on the front of a T-shirt, or just another portal where you can buy your designer goods online (and there are plenty of those already). And as style.com shows, Conde Nast is hardly canny about their online operations.

"but any power the Vogue brand has, it stems entirely from the important position the print magazine once held and the respect that people accorded it."

- Current gens doesn't care about Vogue like those gens before them so it makes sense. I think their position in fashion is slowly dying anyways. Just got expedited by a global pandemic. Also the industry itself is a shell of its former self anyways.

 

[LoveFashion25]

Condé Nast is doomed but Anna is not the issue here.
It’s maybe our issue because we care about the artistic vision but IRL, the issue is more business related in a industry that is forced to change and adapt.

Anna Wintour remains not because her Vogue is fabulous but only because the model she has found for her Vogue to exist in this new era is the most efficient yet.

We are witnessing the end of magazines like we used to know. They have to reinvent themselves.
They won’t get rid of Anna now because Anna is still the Authority of fashion and from her public persona to what she had transformed the Met Gala into, she brings advertisers, celebrities and pushes for contents to be created to somehow make the Vogue brand relevant.

Of Course it’s obvious that Newhouse has a strategy to push Edward closer to the big job but I’m concerned in which strategy he has to maintain his group.

It’s both sad and telling to see how dependent of Anna they are...

Why are the Newhouse pushing Edward? Possible replacement to Anna?

Also; "Anna is still the Authority of fashion"- Sure in the industry but publicly its not the case. Influencers have taken over. I do agree without her the Met Gala wouldn't be as successful as it is, also she does bring advertisers, celebrities, and latches on to whats current to stay relevant, but ultimately the Anne "era" is slowly going to die esp with how Conde Nast is operating.

 

[thestylisha]

The reason the current gen seem to care less about Vogue is because Vogue fails to cater to them. They don't care about the 'top 10 emerald accessories for the season' which seems to be Vogue's forte at the moment (this is especially the case for their websites).

 

[thestylisha]

Why are the Newhouse pushing Edward? Possible replacement to Anna?

Also; "Anna is still the Authority of fashion"- Sure in the industry but publicly its not the case. Influencers have taken over. I do agree without her the Met Gala wouldn't be as successful as it is, also she does bring advertisers, celebrities, and latches on to whats current to stay relevant, but ultimately the Anne "era" is slowly going to die esp with how Conde Nast is operating.

Conde Nast need a fashionista- a knowledgeable authority in fashion who is also admired in the social sphere. Someone who will keep the Met Gala a subject of frenzy, someone who is loved by designers and fashion fanatics alike. Influencers come and go. A true force in fashion prevails.

 

[Lola701]

Why are the Newhouse pushing Edward? Possible replacement to Anna?

Also; "Anna is still the Authority of fashion"- Sure in the industry but publicly its not the case. Influencers have taken over. I do agree without her the Met Gala wouldn't be as successful as it is, also she does bring advertisers, celebrities, and latches on to whats current to stay relevant, but ultimately the Anne "era" is slowly going to die esp with how Conde Nast is operating.

Influencers have no authority in fashion. Influencers don’t have access to the designers the way a major editor can, influencers don’t have influence over the strategy of a brand, influencers don’t have access to Bernard Arnault, François Pinault, Bruno Pavlosky.
Indeed, influencers are similar to magazines. But they aren’t BTS. The power and the influence are BTS, always...

The Anna era of Vogue is going to die because she will at some point Vogue but what is going on in the industry right now will not end. People are now adapting to the times.

Maybe what’s going on in the pages of Vogue will change for the better but don’t expect the industry to turn around just because Anna leaves.

During the peak of the lockdowns, people called for a revolution, a slower world, less consumption, less collections and stuff. The moment everybody opened it was back to normal...