It used to take me an entire month to get through an issue of Vanity Fair, because I had to find the time to sit down and properly read through a feature, which would mention events and people which I would have to find out more about.
Now it takes me a month to start looking at the issue, and then only because it's sitting in the pile of things 'one step away from the recycling bin' and the pile is getting tall, so I need to read them and move them on.
Vanity Fair might always have fawned over its Hollywood cover stars, but at least the accompanying photography attempted a sort of grandeur or a sense of expensive glamour. Now it's just people standing in front of a sheet or a photoshopped block of colour.
As for the serious articles - in all the PR about their global restructuring, do we ever hear Conde Nast boasting about its commitment to quality journalism? They have decided the universe revolves around what people look at online, which means everything gets tailored to short attention spans. Any semblance of depth - in either the photography or the writing - has been deemed unnecessary.
Never mind the idea of writing something that carries an understanding of history and context, as long as you say what's 'right' according to the way the wind blows on the internet, as if the hot air of people's opinions represents a form of distilled wisdom, rather than just the chatter of a billion monkey brains.