Condé Nast Portfolio is worth the $60 a year

Condé Nast Portfolio November 2007

Every now and then, there’s a magazine that captures my imagination. In 1988, it was Autocar; by the early 1990s, it was Wired, then Fast Company by the end of the decade. Now, the magazine (other than any I publish!) is Condé Nast Portfolio.
   I’m annoyed that, like Business Week, Portfolio is next to impossible to get in New Zealand, though Advance can count on me as a subscriber now. As a business magazine, it is intelligently written and beautifully presented: think of it as Business Week meets The Atlantic Monthly. Design-wise, it’s a tad over-ornamented and olde worlde American, but that text typeface is beautiful and I could read it all day. It is intelligently written, but not in an inaccessible way—like the Atlantic.
   Lucky Yanks can subscribe for a dollar a month whereas I have to pay the full US$60 to get them Down Under, but at around NZ$7 an issue, it’s not a lot to ask. Postage alone won’t cover that seven bucks, and I should know.