Condé Nast’s move last week to downsize Portfolio’s Website, reducing its staff from twenty to five, puts a damper on one of the company’s most ambitious attempts to move beyond magazines. Still, Portfolio’s founding publisher, David Carey, had to do something: The site was expensive, and its diminution helped save the magazine. “There’s definitely a sense that shutting the magazine would be the end of the line for his CEO aspiration,” says one Portfolio staffer. The site averaged 3 million unique viewers since September, and some believed it flourished partly because of its independence from the print publication under editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman. The site’s managing editor, Dan Colarusso, formerly of the New York Post, still has a job, but “I don’t think he wants to stay under the new stripped-down regime,” says a colleague. Adds another, “He’s been saying ‘I came here to build a newsroom.’” Meanwhile, Portfolio soldiers on. “If they wanted to close the magazine, they would have,” says a staffer.
