Paul Smalera

In Part One of this essay, I laid out my own personal ride with Condé Nast Portfolio, Si Newhouse’s ill-fated venture into business media. Like baseball managers, magazine writers are hired to be fired, so aside from the shock of that layoff being my very first, I harbor no special animosity towards the magazine or anyone who worked there. But since the magazine was about business, it’s not unreasonable to dissect, from that perspective, the failings therein. As I see it, there were three major ones (Dan Gross sees four):

• An emphasis on print over web.

Lipman came to Condé Nast from the Wall Street Journal to run a print magazine. Although the website was much touted, it was a secondary thought to her and her top editorial staff. When a directive went out from the then Managing Editor that all hands were expected to contribute to the website, that directive was remanded by Lipman for her top tier contract writers. She wanted to save their talents for the magazine, she explained. But in 2007, the future of any publication has to include a plan for the web. And that plan had to be the web. Portfolio was touted within Condé Nast as being a non-CondéNet operation. CondéNet is the Politburo for all the magazine websites in the Condé Nast stable. With its own editors, production staff and advertising personnel, its centralized approach has led most magazines within 4 Times Square to devote little if any of their resources to the websites. And why would they? They receive no benefit, no cut of advertising, and no praise for doing so.

Lately, the tide has slowly turned, as more sharing of content and personnel is happening, and magazines are held accountable for their sites, whether under CondéNet or not. But thanks to the fragmented structure of the company, determined largely by the creation of fiefdoms for each of the younger generation of Newhouses working there, the institutional default is still to keep the magazine and web separate. So while Portfolio’s website structure was a major advance within the company, it was still archaic compared how tightly integrated the website of say New York magazine is to the printed product.

When robust websites play such a huge role as they do in media today, Portfolio’s was a fundamental flaw in the structure of the magazine. An editor and publisher more focused on a tight integration of the two parts might have found they were greater than their sum. But when the time came to make cuts last year it was the website that was sacrificed. At the time, I heard that publisher William Li told the laid off staff that even though the website was doing better than the magazine, it would never meet the company’s financial goals for the combined product. And as long as Condé Nast considers itself primarily a print operation, it will run into that problem with all of its websites.

• Spare no expense.

The gilded age of media is over. Though one former Journal reporter recently recounted in The New York Times how he was admonished in the early 80’s for flying business rather than first class to South America, print media as a cash machine is yesterday’s news. Yet spending at Portfolio was epic. I heard more than once from staffers about $100,000 photo shoots that were shelved or thrown out when the corresponding articles fell out of favor. In some ways, this is the Condé Nast way– this is the company that brought Annie Leibovitz into the mainstream, and spared no expense to set up her iconic Vanity Fair shoots. While Vanity Fair traffics in Hollywood and glamour, Portfolio attempted to bring the same gloss to business. When I started working at Portfolio, I told sources on the phone that we were like Vanity Fair or The New Yorker, but for business journalism. (It was a common refrain since few people recognized our name at the time.) This may have been a convenient phrase for staffers, but as a model for a photography budget, it was a bit much. Portfolio ran some stunning pictures– but there are many more you’ll never see, because they died an expensive death. Ultimately the readership was not interested in vanity shots of Summer Redstone and Barry Diller.

• Fragmentation.

As I wrote in Part 1, Portfolio was given every chance and resource to be a big, important new magazine. But the truth is, the era of that kind of publication may have passed. Based on the wild undulations in content from issue to issue, and the varying directives I got for the somewhat regular Demystifier column that I helped conceive and write, it felt as if we tried to please too many people in too many different ways, ultimately pleasing no one. A public that has grown used to finding exactly the type of niche content it wants from blogs and websites online, especially in the business realm, was probably not going to give Portfolio the time it needed to show it could make long form business profile journalism relevant again.

This is where the website comes in. An editorial staff of nearly a hundred is looking for more space than a magazine can normally provide. A website can provide that space, and if content is coordinated properly, it can play off the magazine, rather than merely mimic it. But in my experiences in planning features at the magazine (admittedly limited), a comprehensive strategy for print articles to hit the web with additional content, additional photos, etc, didn’t exist. Instead the web team was left to pick up the pieces of the print staff, and scrounge together a plan for repurposing and adding content, with little or no help from the original writer or editor. Wired with its massive blog network, is a Condé Nast title that has invested heavily in capturing fragmented audiences online, and steering them to the magazine. Of course, Wired has also faced a precipitous drop in print advertising, and its online operation has also faced staff cuts.

Condé Nast is not going out of business anytime soon, and at the very least, its flagship titles will probably exist in perpetuity. But its future moves will say a lot about whether it learned its lesson with Portfolio. Surely the economy will recover, and the Newhouses will attempt to grow their business once again. But in that future, when the opportunities are ripe, the path may be just as obscured as it is now.

Two thoughts of advice to the Newhouse family and other media billionaires under whose beneficence we work:

One, if you’re going to chase a fragmented audience like the business one, be prepared to sink huge resources into channeling a thousand streams of different types of readers to the mothership by creating niche content that appeals to them. The blog network of Portfolio.com was the closest thing to this approach they had, but since it probably wasn’t seen in this light, it was sacrificed to save the already crumbling parent.

Two, don’t build a rocket ship to the moon. There are thousands of journalists looking for jobs (and this is not a personal plea for reemployment) and thousands more in journalism school who are trained in new media. Want a big new idea from your executives? Start a Condé Nast incubator and make them read the proposals for funding that come in. That’s how the world’s most successful new media enterprises, from Twitter to Yelp to Facebook, are being built. (And if you don’t think those are media, you are beyond help.) I promise you, the next Vanity Fair is not coming from the executive suite. But it may come from a writer or editor who’s currently out on the street. (Last thing: if they tell you it’s going to cost a $150 million dollars to launch, run.)

All over Bangkok are massive skyscrapers that were literally abandoned and repossessed by banks when that country went through its own financial crisis, twelve years ago. Thailand waited four years to create a “bad bank,” to help salvage its banking system. In the meantime, the zombie banks of Thailand were unable to get lending started again. The result: these construction projects, into which so much time and resources had been sunk, were total losses. The US has dozens of projects that on hold right now for very much the same reason– lack of liquidity–though we did get here in a different way. Without a bad bank to help free up capital, our cities could soon look a little more like Bangkok. But Obama, Geithner and his team stalling on creating a bad bank. And whehn they talk about creating on, it’s a public private hyrid, which will limit its power to fix the crisis. Read about what happened in Bangkok, and how to avoid its happening to us, here:

Zombie Banks Build Ghost Towers | The Big Money.

I wrote a story in The Big Money today talking about this idea of a “Lost Decade.” If you’ve noticed this meme in the news, you’ll know it comes from the idea that Japan, who had their own credit and housing crisis in the early 90s, so mismanaged their response that they suffered from a lost decade of economic stagnation.


Everywhere I turn today, people are talking about staving off an American lost decade. But, if you just look at the end result of the past ten years, didn’t we already have one? And might it not help our own bailout efforts to acknowledge this fact? I think so:


Lost Decade? We Just Had One | The Big Money.

One of the first things I wanted to write about when I made the leap was a little country/bluesy rock and roll band that a friend of mine introduced me to by taking me to see them in a dark, weird basement under a pizzeria in Soho.

When I met them there, I introduced myself as a writer, which is something I did once before, long ago, when I had hardly written anything. After that embarrassing moment, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but this time, I had dropped my entire old life and moved to a new city to BE a writer. And even if I wasn’t yet, damnit, I was at least gunning to be one, which was a definite improvement.

So, I talked to this red-haired larger-than-life, lead-singer-of-a-man names Sean, and told him I wanted to write about them. And I desperately wanted to, because they played a kind of music that I felt like I had been missing all my life. So I pitched a story about them relentlessly.

And

nothing

happened.

Fast forward two years. I have learned a ton about this business, and it seems Hoots and Hellmouth have learned a ton about theirs, having signed a record deal and released a professionally produced album, which is excellent. The fact that both of us made alot of progress in a relatively short time (which feels extremely long, I’m sure, to both of us), let me finally write a story about them for the New York Press. It was an extremely rewarding story to write, and I hope you’ll take a minute to listen to them, or maybe even buy the CD (also available here).

Congratulations boys! It was an honor to be able to write about you, and your month-long residency at Pete’s Candy Store. I caught their last show there last night, and they sounded and seemed better than ever. Keep spreading the good word.

A very brief review of a man and his sausage. Verdict: It’s pretty good!

New York Press - PAUL SMALERA - Cheap Eats

As much as I want to leave my New York Times clip up there until I have another, I wrote a review of the Campbell Apartment, a swank little bar in Grand Central, for the Press recently. Reading it will give you a window into my daily battle with tourists in Times Square. Enjoy!

New York Press - PAUL SMALERA - Old-School Class

photo by wendy ploger

I’m happy to link to a story I wrote in today’s New York Times: Havens North Tucson. Havens is the second homes column, so this is a story about people who live there and why they chose to buy a second home in Tucson. The southwest is a beautiful area, and I really felt thrilled to be able to cover it and say things like:

If, like Buck Clippard, you fly but have trouble finding airplane parking, you might consider requesting permission to land at La Cholla Airpark, a community 20 miles north of downtown Tucson. The Clippards have a second home there — and a two-plane hangar on a taxiway (or, as the earthbound might call it, a road), right off the airpark’s main drag, a 4,500-foot landing strip.

Anyway, please give it a read and enjoy. If you’re interested in reading more about the foothills, one of the real estate agents I spoke with, John Schneider, writes frequently about the area on his aptly named blog, The Tucson Foothills.

Also, thanks to Rob Ploger who, after all, moved to Tucson (not in the foothills though) and gave Wendy, his sister, my girlfriend, a reason to bring me out West and see what all the fuss was about. Now I know!

Well, I don’t know what’s happening to the East Village. Since I moved across the island, comes word that Kurowycky Meat Products has closed its doors after 50 years of fatty service. This was the Polish deli of my childhood dreams, complete with slabs of greasy bacon back (boczek pronounced bo-check) sitting right out on the counter, totally safe to eat because they had been cured to within an inch of their lives. The kielbasa, sadly, had to be put in refrigeration several years ago thanks to overzealous DOHers. Salty, fatty meat products are the staples of Polish winter cuisine. I didn’t shop here often enough. It will be sorely missed.

As if this blow wasn’t enough, Teresa’s Polish restaurant, also on First Ave., like, I think the same BLOCK of First Ave, has closed too, according to Gothamist. This was just a simple diner, with cheap and quite good food. No elegies (except this one) will likely be written about it, but I’ve always liked “Fanfare for the Common Man” and this restaurant shared that same space in my heart: just a simple place to get simple food, prepared from scratch and with some heart and love. Too many of these places in New York seem to be going out of business. I wonder what will take their places.

In other news, I reviewed an old favorite for The New York Press this week, the Italian restaurant named Max. And then Eater promptly published a rumor that it was going out business too, though this is still just a rumor for now. What is going on?

For the last six months, after only two successful trips to the Daisy May’s cart that roams Midtown West roughly between 44th and 50th Streets, I’ve been dying for a pulled pork sandwich or some beef-tip chili, but DM pulled their carts off the street for the cold New York winter. I can understand that. Working a cart in the dead of cold must HURT, even if the cart operator has unlimited access to that chili.

But Daisy May’s, it’s MAY already. Time to either pull down this inane message about the carts not being back until spring or FESS UP, and tell us why you’re keeping us Midtown office drones pulled away from our pork. Don’t make me wait for Daisy Damned July to not have to venture to 11th Avenue for some pig. Or at least drop these guys a line so we all know what’s going on. Deal?

Another week, another clip. Read my meandering feature on the east side of Broome Street–its history, its culture, and its future. For out of towners, Broome is one of those little streets on the Lower East Side that, while part of the whole, also looks like a microcosm of all of New York. Ok, there are alot of streets like that. But Broome is more interesting than most. Read: New York Press.

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