After the Fall of the Glossy Magazine, What's Left of Condé Nast?
October 28, 2019 7:06 AM   Subscribe

Reeves Wiedeman at NY Mag gazes into the future of Condé Nast (Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ, Pitchfork...) under Anna Wintour and a new CEO. "On the sales side, magazines were combined into clusters — one includes both Teen Vogue and The New Yorker. A once-cohesive magazine might now have people spread out over three or four floors of the building. It certainly reduced the internecine warfare, but at the price of everyone feeling they were on the same brand team. Shortly after the hubbing, a Creative Group employee tacked a pale-pink Post-it on a wall in the office, summing up their feelings on the situation: WE ARE CREATIVES, NOT 2ND CLASS CITIZENS."
posted by adrianhon (17 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
a look back from tnr...
The Transformation of Condé Nast - "How a media mogul defined class and invented the modern magazine."
posted by kliuless at 7:19 AM on October 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


"Teen Vogue, which went online-only in 2017, has refocused on fashion; a post-Trump foray into wokeness was hard to monetize."

Oh no.
posted by Karaage at 7:43 AM on October 28, 2019 [16 favorites]


WE ARE CREATIVES, NOT 2ND CLASS CITIZENS.

Anyone who describes themselves as a "creative" is a 2nd class citizen... at best.
posted by atrazine at 9:20 AM on October 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


Anyone who describes themselves as a "creative" is a 2nd class citizen... at best.

Eh. That's how the suits and bean-counters refer to them.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:52 AM on October 28, 2019 [5 favorites]


A prominent publicist went up to a Vanity Fair editor at a party after Jones took over and asked, regarding its diverse cover stars, “What is this, Ebony Fair?”
Was I supposed to hate-read this whole article? Because I did.
posted by clawsoon at 10:22 AM on October 28, 2019


It's continually jarring to see just how much of the world has been built entirely on the whims of billionaires. The Newhouses have more than enough to keep their magazine empire going indefinitely, or they could decide one day that it's kind of a drag, and hundreds would be instantly out of work and outlets viewed by millions would shutter and be replaced only at great length and incompletely. There's no solid ground where you can't be jerked around for no comprehensible reason by someone incomprehensibly wealthier than you until you get well into the land of generational wealth.
posted by Copronymus at 10:42 AM on October 28, 2019 [16 favorites]


People who use "creative" as a noun might be creative, but they are not writers.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


Conde Nast frustrates me. Quite often there is content in their magazines I would want to read but not enough to subscribe. I'm not going to subscribe to numerous magazines ever again BUT I would not mind paying for a blanket subscription that would get me past the paywall to articles from say Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Wired, etc.
posted by Ber at 12:01 PM on October 28, 2019 [8 favorites]


People who use "creative" as a noun might be creative, but they are not writers

They aren't writers in this case either- the "creative group" includes creative directors, designers, photo editors, etc.
posted by pinochiette at 1:24 PM on October 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


Information wants to be free. Information also wants to pay for Anna Wintour's expense account.
posted by clawsoon at 2:02 PM on October 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


The hot take from this piece that has taken over my feed is the CN chief revenue officer making a failed analogy about old Vanity Fair vs new of Drake covering a Bill Withers song, and when pressed for an actual example, replied after the interview and via a spokesperson “‘Old Town Road,’ original by Billy Ray Cyrus. Remix by Lil Nas X.”

These are the people in charge of some of the (once?) most culturally relevant publications in the land.
posted by thecjm at 4:27 PM on October 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


We subscribed to the New Yorker for years but I cancelled after getting tired of the fake “second notice” ads designed to look like past due bills they constantly sent trying to get you to extend your subscription. Basic respect for your readers is table stakes now.
posted by adamsc at 5:20 PM on October 28, 2019 [4 favorites]


I subscribed to The New Yorker for years, but I'm letting it go now. I started noticing that so many of the articles, particularly in Talk of the Town, referenced Donald Trump. Sometimes it seems like you can't turn a page without seeing that name. Avocados? Trump. Iceland? Trump. Dog show? Trump.

And then Trump was referenced in a freaking poem.
posted by ITravelMontana at 7:29 PM on October 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


People who use "creative" as a noun might be creative, but they are not writers.

On the other hand, I finally have health insurance.
posted by thivaia at 8:25 PM on October 28, 2019 [7 favorites]


Writers are creatives. However, writers aren't really writers anymore. They are content-creators.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:38 PM on October 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


I think the Bon Appetite youtube channels provide the model they need to survive. Staying a print only medium is going to be doomed. The future seems to be providing content across all media with podcasts, videos, written content, etc.
posted by ShakeyJake at 10:00 AM on October 29, 2019 [2 favorites]


> one includes both Teen Vogue and The New Yorker

Oh my. I used to work at Condé Nast, back when money flowed freely, and the staff at The New Yorker were even snobbier than those at Vogue. I wonder how they're all getting along now.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:23 PM on October 29, 2019


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