Thinkcorps

So Conde Nast has finally launched its new business magazine, Portfolio, which you can see at www.portfoliomag.com—oops, I mean www.portfolio.com.

The mag’s introduced with the tagline, “We see the big picture.”

I am not making any statements about viability, since CN has deep pockets and a powerful ad sales dept. But I do wonder how relevant Portfolio thinks it can be in today’s world.

It’s well-known that for any real insider-y information, you need to hit up B2B titles or, better yet, join an association or pick up a telephone. This is even more true today, with cellphone messaging and online forums. The information that really drives business never makes it to a business magazine, at least not before it’s completely stale.

A natural corollary is that “business” magazines aren’t actually targeted at “business” people—at least not the people on the front lines. The biz mag audience is the hundreds of thousands of middle managers, who are now finding themselves increasingly disintermediated as their companies struggle to compete on a faster global playing field.

Now that I think of it, Portfolio could be a stroke of utter genius.

The magazine (quietly, desperately) tries to evoke that 1980s high of noblesse oblige, though tempered by 20 years of pop-ified reality. I’m weirdly reminded of Charlie Sheen’s Wall Street, as if some shadowy half-demon from the Buffyverse were trying to conjure him out of the imaginary past and into the world of flesh and blood.

Save us Charlie! Save our jobs, our corner offices, our condos, our cars ... and maybe that last twinge of self-worth, if you get around to it.