Further thoughts on the demise of Portfolio: It was almost exactly two years ago that the first issue hit newsstands; I wrote about 3,000 words mostly reviewing the ads. At the time I suggested that, given the resources behind it, the magazine would probably last at least two years. I claim no prescience in this regard; pretty much everyone knew that Conde Nast was going to pump enough money into it to make sure it wasn't a colossal failure. And also, there were the pillows!

[I]n a converted 11th-floor conference room, a place Carey likes to call his "idea lab," black leather couches from Design Within Reach are accessorized with throw pillows. On one side of each pillow is the gray pinstripe often used in Portfolio's branding; on the other, fuchsia satin is meant to signify luxury and includes a corner strip of the magazine's logo. "[Advertisers] come here, admire the pillows, and by the time they get back to the office, there's one waiting for them," said Carey proudly.

Anyway, the magazine had been a media punching bag since its inception; even as the massive carnage in the industry made everyone a little more sympathetic to struggling publications, there was still a special degree of ire amongst those who rooted against it. And can you blame them? It was not a good title. From the hopelessly outdated covers-one of the great tragedies of the magazine's shuttering is the fact that we won't get to see the next issue, which was probably supposed to have a photo of Ted Turner from 1998 on it-to the ridiculous expenditures lavished on print folks while the often excellent website was gutted, to the bazaar of stale nuggets cluttering up the front of the book, it was clear that this was a thing that should have never been. Still, it's weird, right? I mean, you knew that it would eventually fold, but didn't a small part of you think they would never fold it?

I could not be more sympathetic to those who lost their jobs today; hopefully Conde can find a way to absorb some of them into other publications, although, given the current climate it seems unlikely. But it does speak to the magazine's uselessness: some of the best stuff Portfolio did-I'm thinking of a couple of those Michael Lewis pieces, or Sheelah Kolhatkar's profile of Indian oil magnate Mukesh Ambani-could have fit easily into almost any of the other Conde titles. Does the fact that Conde finally pulled the plug mean that they've actually realized that? Probably not. But even S.I. Newhouse eventually has to stop fucking around with the inevitable.

And, hell, I actually subscribed to the damn thing, which is ludicrous when you consider that I'm making no money and am having a hard time even affording my life-sustaining nicotine habit at this point. I think I actually just renewed last week. I just know they're going to stick me with a Vanity Fair sub. It's a sad end all around.

Related: "When you massively overpay for art and editorial, refuse to do timely and important stories, and inflate your rate base far beyond actual reader demand, what do you expect to happen?"