Subtraction

On Monday, Condé Nast shut down its fledgling business publication after just two years, due to a precipitous drop in advertising that magazines everywhere are experiencing. What’s amazing, though, is that the company could launch a print magazine as recently as two years ago — at a time when publishing was already clearly moving online or at least changing according to Internet-age economics — and pay so little mind to costs:

“Despite cuts at Portfolio, some of the old Condé Nast ways remained. To illustrate a November 2008 article arguing that credit derivatives were ‘the elephant in the room’ at JPMorgan Chase, the magazine spent what one staff member, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said was US$30,000 to procure the services of a real elephant to menace a model at a photo shoot.”