The Wintour of Our Content

Anna Wintour will add the newly created role of artistic director of Condé Nast to her existing duties as Vogue editor and editorial director of Teen Vogue, the Times reports.  The position was created in part to keep Ms. Wintour at Condé Nast, and should put an end the persistent (and persistently debunked) speculation that the Obama-supporting editrix could decamp for a plum ambassador gig. Condé is expected to make the announcement today. 

Ms. Wintour, who will celebrate her silver anniversary helming Vogue this summer, will take on some of Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse's former duties. Last fall, the 85-year-old Mr. Newhouse began to yield the reigns he had held at Condé, amid speculation on plans for his successor.

“Si Newhouse leaves a void, inevitably,” Charles H. Townsend, the chief executive of Condé Nast, told the Times. “Anna, without even having to think twice about it, is the most qualified person to pick up that torch and carry it into the future.” 

In addition to Ms. Wintour's role at Vogue and Teen Vogue, she will take on "broader creative duties throughout the company, and having a say in its expanding portfolio of platforms, including the recent development of an entertainment division," the Times reports.

“It is something I do a lot anyway in my role at Vogue,” Ms. Wintour told the Times about her new position, which she said she sees as “almost like being a one-person consulting firm.”

“I advise all sorts of people in the outside world, and really, I see this as an extension of what I am doing, but on a broader scale,” she said.

The New Yorker editor David Remnick said that he has already benefited from Ms. Wintour's input and will continue to do so.

“I don’t expect Anna to be picking the cartoons or directing our war coverage,” Mr. Remnick said. “But I have asked her advice numerous times and always been grateful for it. She’s a great editor. Period.”

On a side note, are we the only ones who want to see Ms. Wintour's taste in New Yorker cartoons?

The heir (a still from the documentary Born Rich).

As a child born into one of the country's most powerful publishing families, it can be hard to escape from the shadow of one's overwhelmingly successful antecedents. It appears that Samuel I. Newhouse IV didn't want to be in the literal shadow of the family offices, soon to relocate to the World Trade Center, either. He's jettisoned his trendy Tribeca loft at 55 North Moore Street for $2.7 million, according to city records.

Mr. Newhouse bagged the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath co-op for $2.4 million back in 2009;  a nice newlywed nest for him and his brand new bride. As you might expect, the fourth-floor pad is packed with authentic industrial touches that give a faint whiff of the neighborhood's working class history but none of the odor: industrial pendant lights, a tin-pressed ceiling, steel and mesh doors leading to the master bedroom (custom, of course) and Cuban hand-rubbed white washed brick walls. And don't forget the vintage industrial ladder that leads up to a sleeping loft, right next to the industrial sliding steel doors opening into "the cozy third bedroom," according to the listing, held by Elika & Associates broker Yael Dunsky.

Newhouse's old house.

If so inclined, buyer John Woodby will be able to continue the fantasy of long days of punishing physical labor in the kitchen, where there are plenty of props for the pretend chef: Leche de Luna stone countertops, deep double sinks, a Viking refrigerator, Fisher/Paykel dishwasher and Wolf range with double ovens. He could even buy a few more, if so inclined, with the few hundred thousand he shaved off the $2.99 million ask.

Where will Mr. Newhouse's new house be? We're not sure, as no purchases under his name have hit city records in the last few days. He could be cutting expenses in solidarity with the 60 staffers that Conde Nast just laid off—if he moved to Cobble Hill he could save some cash and kick it with fellow media scion A.G. Sulzberger. But heirs to vast media fortunes usually stretch their spending wings as they get older.

kvelsey@observer.com

Anna Wintour and Sally Singer: together again.

Sally Singer is heading back to Vogue in the newly created role of digital creative director, The Fix reports.

Ms. Singer left Condé Nast, where she was Vogue’s fashion news and features director,  in 2010 to become the editor in chief of T. But her two-year stint at the Times came to an abrupt end this past in August. WSJ. editor Deborah Needleman assumed the top role at the Times’s luxury mag last month.

In her new role, Ms. Singer will again report to Anna Wintour and collaborate with Caroline Palmer, Vogue.com's editor. Ms. Singer's will return to Vogue on October 29.

Guess some things never go out of style ...

WWD (which is owned by Condé Nast) reports that Self lost eight in editorial and three on the business side. Self already has a small staff, a source noted to The Observer. Brides laid off five in editorial (although some have been moved to part time) and laid off five in business. Condé Nast Traveler, GQ and Wired laid off one editorial staffer each, sources told WWD. Two were laid off in the corporate communications department. Other layoffs are not yet clear.

Update: A tipster writes to say that Chris Baker, a senior editor at Wired, has been let go and there are more layoffs coming at the tech mag. At GQ, senior editor Logan Hill was laid off on Thursday.

The layoffs appear to be related to the five percent cuts that Condé Nast was asking be trimmed from all magazine 2013 budgets. The Post first reported on the new edict last week. That was in addition to the 10 percent that most magazines were told to trim over the summer.

We have been hearing rumblings about layoffs and restructing at Fairchild Fashion Media (the Condé division that owns WWD and Observer alumni-driven M).

"Fairchild Fashion Media (FFM) is continuously evaluating our businesses to ensure we are operating at optimal efficiency. To that end, we have undergone a restructure so the company is well positioned for 2013. Moving forward, FFM will continue to invest in our existing brands as well as our new ventures, such as our newest acquisition NowManifest," read the statement we received from Fairchild in response to our query. No further word on the what that restructuring will look like or possible layoffs.

However, we just recieved word from Fairchild that WWD publisher Paul Jowdy has been promoted to Vice President and Group Publisher of WWD Brand and M. In his expanded role, Mr. Jowdy will be responsible for Men’s Week and M as well as continue to oversee WWD in print and online.

Know more? Get in touch: ksmoke@observer.com

Carine Roitfeld and Anna Wintour in friendlier times.

Hearst Magazines has named Carine Roitfeld  the global fashion director for Harper’s Bazaar.  This move ramps up the rivalry between the former editrix of French Vogue and Condé Nast. Ms. Roitfeld, who was once seen as a possible successor to Anna Wintour, abruptly left Condé Nast in 2010.

Ms. Roitfeld introduced her new magazine, CR Fashion Book, just last month and will continue to put out the biannual magazine, which is published by Fashion Media Group, the company behind Visionaire and V magazines.

Hearst said her collaboration “may include covers of many of Harper’s Bazaar’s international editions.”

“This collaboration marks the first time anything like this has been done, and we’re very excited about what Carine will bring to Bazaar editions around the world,” said Duncan Edwards, the president and chief executive of Hearst Magazines International, in a statement.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Edwards described Ms. Roitfeld’s new role "as similar to that of a syndicated columnist." Ms. Roitfeld will write stories that are included in multiple international editions of Bazaar but will be  “independent and separate to the rest of the magazine,” Mr. Edwards told the Times.

“I think the goal is 5 percent, and there is not a lot of leniency,” a Condé Nast source told the Post. So far, no magazine has been asked to cut more than the mandatory 5 percent, but this cut is is addition to the ten percent that most Condé mags had to cut from the current budget over the summer. Most, but not all. During that round of cuts, The New Yorker remained untouched. But this time, not even The New Yorker is going to be spared.

As with all news of budget cuts, rumors of layoffs are sure to follow. Although none have been announced yet, it may be a matter of time and some open jobs are going unfilled in order to avoid the inevitable.

One position that will have to be filled is that of publisher of luxury fashion mag W in the wake of Nina Lawrence's surprise announcement yesterday. Ms. Lawrence is leaving her post at W to go to The Wall Street Journal as vice president of global marketing and advertising sales.

Then the Vanity Fair staffers noticed that the glitch was more widespread then they thought. It wasn’t just Vanity Fair and it wasn’t just Golf for Women’s ghostly domain name. Other email addresses throughout Condé Nast were switched to the domain @fairchildfashion.com (a current, fashionable division of Condé Nast) and to the tech mag domain @wired.com. At one point, email addresses moved like a Ouija Board between @golfforwomen and @fairchildfashion.

If this switch took place in a movie, just think of all the pranks that could have been played in an hour. Unfortunately, life is not a movie and pranks take a while to think up.

Do Vanity Fair staffers have any regrets?

“We may never know why, for one lucky hour, we were unwitting, involuntary staffers of a gendered athletics magazine that folded four years ago. What we do know is this: we did not use our time as Golf for Women staffers wisely. Far more gear from pro shops should have been called in, many more reservations at exclusive golf clubs should have been made, and additional solicitations to Tiger Woods’s mistresses should have gone out,” Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner wrote on the magazine’s blog.

Although we know it was most likely a technology glitch, we prefer to think that for a brief time yesterday afternoon Condé Nast was haunted by the ghosts of editors past.

Illustration: Jason Seiler

About six years ago, Tom Florio, then the publisher of Vogue, had an idea. He wanted to expand the fashion bible’s brand into a new platform: online television. The magazine’s discerning editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, approved and Mr. Florio found blue-chip financial investors who did too. He’d been working on the proposal for nine months when he presented it to Si Newhouse, Chuck Townsend and other top Condé Nast brass.

“I hate it,” Mr. Newhouse said.

Encountering Mr. Newhouse at a dinner party a few days later, Mr. Florio asked the Condé Nast chairman to elaborate on his abrupt dismissal of the idea.

“All that did was make money,” the boss told him.

It’s hard to imagine the executive who would utter such a sentence in today’s economy (let alone one tasked with navigating the turbulent media market). But the story exemplifies what some say is the defining brilliance of Mr. Newhouse: his quickness to tear a book up, to unceremoniously fire and replace someone (see: Vreeland, Diana, or Mirabella, Grace), to say “no.”

“He makes decisions based on what the essence of Condé Nast was,” Mr. Florio, now CEO of Advanstar Fashion Group, explained.

It’s certainly the signature trait that enabled him to build his stable of glossies into one of the most influential corporate architects of consumer aspiration. But as luxury print advertising—the company’s lifeblood—continues to dry up, Condé Nast is reprogramming its top brass to say “yes”: to brand extensions, such as e-commerce relationships (GQ and Nordstrom), membership programs (Lucky Rewards) and licensed merchandise (Bon Appetit for Home Shopping Network).

Though the 84-year-old Mr. Newhouse remains the company’s chairman and is still regularly spotted in the cafeteria, insiders say his presence is less common and his day-to-day influence quickly waning. The upshot is that the editorial old guard of Condé Nast is losing its best defender, prompting some to wonder if it the company’s “essence,” the ineffable lustre that long captivated advertisers and readers, will survive its 2015 move downtown to 1 World Trade.

Some signs of drift are more apparent than others. Employees have become accustomed to the sight of busted banquettes in the once-gleaming Frank Gehry cafeteria, for instance. “That was the symbol of the luxury of the place,” noted a long-time staffer, adding that the food has also become less appealing. “I think they just stopped caring,” the staffer said. “I think something happened where they were like, ‘I’m not spending any more money.’”

And according to some male editorial employees, even the elevator eye candy isn’t what it used to be. As one put it, “You do sense that maybe one of the weird by-products of the ‘Death of Print’ is that girls in sundresses don’t all flock here quite as much.”

The result seems to be a corporate culture that has lost its edge. “You sense a little bit the loss of that swagger, the feeling that ‘I’m working in some special place,’” the employee added with a sigh.

At this rate, how long will it be before the aroma of garlic—which Mr. Newhouse views with such vampiric scorn that it has been banned from the lunchroom—is wafting through the hallways?

THE ELDEST SON of self-made newspaper mogul Samuel Irving Newhouse, Samuel Irving Jr., aka “Si,” knew a thing or two about aspiration. Born rich but chronically unstylish (surrounded by clotheshorses, he favors a sweatshirt), he left something to be desired as an heir apparent. As a student at Horace Mann and Syracuse, he was ambivalent about journalism, introverted and angsty, according to Carol Felsenthal’s biography, Citizen Newhouse. Living in New York after dropping out of college during his junior year, Mr. Newhouse earned a reputation as the family’s “crowned prince,” racking up bills at 21 and the Stork Club while his younger brother, Donald, demonstrated an affinity for the family business at papers like the Newark Star-Ledger.

Condé Nast was an afterthought investment that Newhouse Sr. snapped up as birthday gift for wife Mitzi in 1959, and therefore not considered a suitable perch for junior. But it was there—under the influence of elegant and brilliant editorial advisers like Leo Lerman, the man of letters whose epic house parties earned him a spot on the Mademoiselle masthead, and Alexander Liberman, the Russian-born artist whose judgment even the most headstrong editors trusted—that Mr. Newhouse found his calling. Lerman and Liberman gave Mr. Newhouse access to the kind of artistic high society from which he’d previously felt excluded. Enthralled, Mr. Newhouse threw himself into the work, serving in positions at Glamour and Vogue, reading every line of the magazines, and to the chagrin of his colleagues, showing up before dawn.

When Liberman wasn’t tearing up his editors’ pages, he was teaching Mr. Newhouse what contemporary art to hang on his walls; the collection eventually earned Mr. Newhouse a spot on the board of MoMA. Liberman also imparted one of his signature managerial gifts: identifying talent. Mr. Newhouse watched Mr. Liberman lure Vreeland from rival Harper’s Bazaar with the promise of a bottomless expense account, then made a name for himself poaching Tina Brown, the young editor of Tatler for his revived Vanity Fair.

Mr. Newhouse learned to spot gifted editors practically in utero. “It was often at such an early stage that other people didn’t even realize it was talent,” Mr. Florio said, recalling the days before Tina was Tina. “She was not all fancy and fashionable but she was wickedly irreverent, super brilliant and funny.”

He then kept that talent on its toes by being selective and unpredictable with his attention.

“I always admired that in a board roomful of talking executives that he would quietly listen to what was not being said and then provide the most meaningful comment of the meeting,” former Details publisher Steve DeLuca, now the publisher of Departures, told The Observer.

But while Mr. Newhouse’s shifting affections made Condé Nast a hotbed of competition, where alpha salesmen (and tabloid regulars) like the late Steve Florio (Tom’s older brother), Ron Galotti and Richard Beckman thrived, a series of appointments and hires over the past two years have dramatically altered the character of the company’s leadership.

At the top, there’s Chuck Townsend. An operations-minded backslapper whom sources say earned major brownie points when he streamlined the company by moving its back offices to Delaware, Mr. Townsend ascended to CEO and president in 2004 when Florio, who suffered from heart problems, stepped down. (He died from a heart attack four years later.)

Two years ago, Mr. Townsend relieved himself of the president half of his job title, handing it off to Bob Sauerberg, Condé Nast’s top consumer marketer (thank him for the subscription cards all over your apartment floor), with whom Mr. Townsend had worked at The New York Times Magazine group in the ’90s. Mr. Sauerberg was tapped just as David Carey, a brainy publisher credited with turning The New Yorker around, departed for rival Hearst and dynamic personalities like Mr. Florio (Steve’s brother) and Mr. Beckman fled in search of CEO gigs.

According to insiders, Mr. Sauerberg promised the Newhouse family board that controls the company that he would bring in millions in non-advertising revenue, while magazine publishers would continue to report to Mr. Townsend. Mr. Sauerberg’s appointment signaled a sea change. In a 2010 internal memo, he foretold “a consumer-centric business model, a holistic brand management approach and the establishment of a multi-platform, integrated sales and marketing organization.”

In the two years since Mr. Sauerberg took over, he’s significantly reconfigured the top of the company to look less like a magazine publisher, and more like a sales and marketing organization, inventing at least three new positions and eliminating dozens more. First, parent company Advance Publications hired a Yahoo! mergers-and-acquisitions executive, Andrew Siegel, to serve as “senior VP, strategy and corporate development,” i.e., “Find us the next Pinterest, please.” Next, it invested heavily in a brand-new entertainment division to translate so-called “premium magazine content” into television and movies. Almost a decade after Vogue sniffed at Bravo when asked to participate in Project Runway (Elle and Marie Claire happily took part, garnering immeasurable publicity for their efforts), Mr. Sauerberg tapped Dawn Ostroff, the woman behind America’s Next Top Model, to run the new division. In the spring, Condé Nast poached a Lancôme executive, Gillian Gorman Round, to be the first-ever VP of brand development, meaning “e-commerce, membership programs, video, product and sampling.”

The new management structure crowds out the once-crucial editorial director. Liberman hand-picked his replacement: James Truman, the natty, British-born editor who successfully reinvented Details as a proto-lad-mag for marketing-averse Gen Xers. Projecting an aura of millennial cool, he carried the torch for editorial ambition—and its handmaiden, expenditure—up to the brink of the print downturn (and he oversaw the design of that cafeteria). But after Mr. Newhouse used his “no” on Mr. Truman’s proposed art magazine, he left. The position still exists, but it is held by Tom Wallace, a veteran newspaperman and the former editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Wallace is said to have a mind for budget-conscious as opposed to “visionary” editorial content. Meanwhile, as Condé Nast searches for new revenue streams, it seems to be performing triage internally, siccing Bill Wackermann, an old-school charismatic publisher, on Condé Nast cash cow Glamour, for example.

Critics note that Mr. Sauerberg’s slew of new divisions have yet to yield anything lucrative, and the new team’s mandates are only growing more urgent as Condé Nast’s core businesses fade. Earlier this month, CMO Lou Cona laid off much of the company’s print corporate sales team, including the leader of its brand management service, Ideactive. September issues came in light this year, with the exception of Vogue, and publishers were asked to trim their budgets by 10 percent, according to WWD. Like any Condé Nast insider to climb to the top of the heap, Mr. Sauerberg has quickly become the subject of ouster rumors, but it’s early yet. More important, it’s hard to discern who will be judging his efficacy. The changing business model of Condé Nast combined with dramatic shifts at other arms of Advance Publications have renewed a decades-old media parlor game: speculating about Mr. Newhouse’s succession.

According to Thomas Maier’s Newhouse, a long-standing tax loophole (the subject of a failed $1 billion IRS lawsuit in the 1980s) will expire with the passing of Sam Newhouse’s sons, leaving the third Newhouse generation with an unprecedented tax burden, which it will have to “rally to overcome.” Mr. Newhouse has said that his first cousin Jonathan, who runs Condé Nast’s lucrative international business, will replace him, but Jonathan is said to be happily stationed in Europe. At Advance Publication newspapers in Michigan, Louisiana and New Jersey, Steven Newhouse (Si’s nephew, long identified as the third-gen Newhouse to watch) has proven himself a savvy businessman who little relishes underwriting a failing business model. He has reduced the frequency of the family’s print newspapers, focusing their pared-down staffs on digital platforms instead. Steven’s wife, Gina Sanders, is the CEO of Condé sister Fairchild and well-liked by top Condé Nast editors, making her a favorite internal candidate to replace Si.

While the next generation seems equipped to face Condé Nast’s new economic realities, however, it may no longer have the motive. As Condé Nast diversifies its business, distancing itself from the glamorous magazine company that became an improbable home for the family’s misfit patriarch, a once-unthinkable sale may be far less painful.

“Elegance is refusal,” Diana Vreeland pronounced, back when she was in Si’s good graces. Then again, acquiescence does have its advantages.

editorial@observer.com

Hello Nast-e, How You Been? In the "great" tradition of The Devil Wears Prada, Erik Maza reports on yet another bit of roman à clef that has emerged from the former innards of Conde Nast. Okay, so: Karl Taro Greenfeld's forthcoming (and very hyped!)  Triburbia isn't exactly mass-market paperback fodder, but there is a bit about a Conde Nast magazine that "didn’t survive very long in the digital age." The context provided and Maza's guesswork lead him (and us) to believe it's based on one Joanne Lipman of long-deceased Portfolio where Greenfield once worked. Portfolio famously blew a bunch of cash and its failure was like a really highbrow and way more expensive version of any one of Radar's three failures with far less drug use and more Michael Lewis and Felix Salmon. Also, Jeff Bercovici will probably never work at Conde Nast again for the wonderful media reporting he did (on Conde Nast; attaboy!) when he was there. Anyway, Maza hysterically called up Joanne Lipman who didn't comment on the book because she hasn't read it, but more importantly, we now know that Lipman is writing a book about her childhood music teacher instead of a Conde Nast tell-all. [Memo Pad / WWD]

Ghostface Dillah! IAC chairman Barry Diller was on the company's earnings call today when Peter Kafka heard him talking crazy-talk: A print-less Newsweek? Never! But: Not entirely unlikely! [All Things D] 

Nahoo: Welcome back to the media headlines for a day, Jamie Mottram, who previously oversaw Yahoo's whole blog experiment thing, who is now going to USA Today's Sports Media Group. Onward and lateral-ward! [Fishbowl NY]

On The Upside, You Get Marion Berry As Your Mayor: Have you thought about leaving New York City for higher ground lately? Tired of the Gotham grind? Well, D.C. news/gossip/scuttlebutt sheet The Hill has released their 50 Most Beautiful People list for this year, and it's as good a argument against it as anything else, especially if you've vaguely considered moving to D.C. (and let's face it: if you in fact have vaguely considered moving there, you deserve whatever fate awaits you). Also, tawdry mid-summer feature experts that we are, could you pick a worse way to shamelessly paginate, as a deterrent to reading through the entire thing? In D.C., no, because everyone there buys into things like this, as opposed to only a fraction of bored New Yorkers when we do them. [The Hill]

Someone Only She Knows: Remember what Maureen Dowd was like when she was an entirely respectable and hard-nosed reporter, before she pioneered the art of the hard-sell headline (long before The Internet—and TimesSelect—was ever a thing)? Of course you don't, because none of us were alive and if we were we didn't know who Maureen Dowd was yet because she was still an entirely respectable and hard-nosed reporter. Well, now you can relive those glory days. The Awl has a feature on it. [The Awl]

Outliars: Did Malcom Gladwell cause the recession? No, but it's fun to imagine him doing so because he once lectured at Lehman Brothers. Also: Wouldn't he just love  that? In even asking the question, Andrew Sullivan gives Malcolm Gladwell way, way, way too much credit today, while Felix Salmon gives him way too much space to defend himself of this accusation. All of which goes without saying: We all know Jim Cramer caused the recession, anyway. [Andrew Sullivan, Felix Salmon]

And The Pulitzer for Pattinson Service Goes To: The most groundbreaking thing happening in journalism today has to do with Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson. This is like Watergate (for our angsty teenage cousin). It's literally inescapable on any social media platform right now. Congratulations, US Weekly, you've officially pushed VICE out of the "obligatory esoteric ASME nomination" position for next year's awards. [US Weekly]

Please remember to send your tips, legal threats, pencil sketches of funny dog breeds, and pro-bono accounting advice right here.

Happy Wednesday.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

You can't shop these cheekbones.

Ever since print advertising went south and magazine companies started shopping around for a revenue plan B, the glossies have publicly struggled to figure out the ecommerce puzzle.

E-retail shops like Esquire’s Clad opened and shuttered, and flash sale partnerships fizzled. (Vogue x Gilt Groupe, anyone?) Shopping the magazine was an alluring idea—and doable in the age of the iPad—but it was complicated by the fact that the most luxurious were filled with price-upon-request pieces not meant for us plebes.

All that might be changing. Condé Nast’s arty fashion title, W, has unveiled a plan to juggle the dual new media mandates of “social sharing” and “e-tail,” and it’s surprisingly democratic.

On Tuesday, W announced that it had picked ten of its favorite up-and-coming street style bloggers (including Candice Lake, Craig Arend, and Amy Creyer) and given them the keys to their own W vertical. Using a photo crowdsourcing app called Olapic (the Daily News employs it to collect reader photos of parades and protests), the bloggers can update instantly with photos from the field—or runway—providing a steady stream of stuff for W readers to repin, reblog, and retweet.

“We’re always looking for ways to drive social engagement with the brand,” W online director Christina Caldwell told Off the Record. “And W is known for fostering young talent in photographers specifically.”

Enter ecommerce. Starting later this summer, W market editors will give online readers the ability to “shop the looks” in selected street style photos using Lyst.com. The hipper cousin of ShopStyle, Lyst is a social shopping network featuring only a carefully edited list of designers and department stores.

“Like many people, we’ve been thinking about the ecommerce angle for our sites, but I personally didn’t like the shop-the-look idea for W when the fashion writers picked it,” Ms. Caldwell explained. The outfits were rarely available for sale, and their nearest approximations paled in comparison.

“If I can’t offer that exact outfit I don’t think that’s a very good experience for users,” she said.

The ensembles worn by off-duty models and industry types who turn up on style blogs, on the other hand, are no problem for Lyst’s roster of retailers. And because the style is dictated by real people, not W’s fashion editors, the magazine can maintain editorial integrity while taking a bounty on any online sales they facilitate. Not that W has set up a revenue share yet.

“We haven’t exactly worked out what the financial opportunity will be,” Ms. Caldwell explained.

But if it sticks, it could be one of the least brand-damaging attempts at the unseemly business of magazine ecommerce to date. Except, perhaps, when one thinks of the street style bloggers, who are not paid contributors, making their photographs at best, free labor and and worst, free advertising for another company.

But, as Ms. Caldwell tells it, the arrangement works out for them too. Some of the photographers have opted into a sponsorship agreement with W, allowing Condé Nast to sell W-caliber advertisements on their own personal blogs.

“And we can always use them for online editorial assignments,” she added.