It’s been three days since the closure of Portfolio, and the staffers at the magazine have been going through the three stages of media grief: They have written impassioned screeds on blogs. They have looted the office (“The halls were decorated with these really nice black-and-white NYC cityscape photos,” one spy tells us. “After everything went down, people started scavenging and grabbing them off the walls to take home, until Jacob Lewis, the managing editor, had to go around and find them all and then lock them up for safekeeping.”) Now, they are drinking away the pain. So far, there have been at least three unofficial parties celebrating the magazine’s demise that we know of, not including the private-drinking or shower-stall-crying parties staffers are doing on their own.
On Monday, the day the news broke, staffers (excluding controversial and oft-maligned editor Joanne Lipman) were invited to mourn together at Botanica. (E-mail-invite subject line: “The End of an Error.”) There, the presence of Paul Smalera, the former editor whose takedown of Lipman appeared on Gawker that very day, raised a few eyebrows, as “reaction to his piece inside the magazine was not favorable,” a soon-to-be-former staffer tells us. “Even among people with no love for Joanne.”
Last night, about a dozen staffers gathered again at Bryant Park Cafe. This invite had “A ‘Wicked Witch of the West,’ theme,” says our spy, which did not mean everyone wore pointy hats.
Today, an official farewell party, one to be held at Lipman’s home, was announced. The invite came from her assistant, Silvia Killingsworth, and read:
Time to raise a toast to ourselves!
At my place, next Tuesday,
May 5, at 6 p.m.
[Address redacted]
Pls rsvp to silvia me at above email
See you there!
Joanne Lipman
Our spy doesn’t know anything about this party, though. They weren’t invited.
