What kind of Conde Nast magazine editor fires her number two, just as the magazine is about to go monthly? The Joanne Lipman kind! The Portfolio staff, we hear, are pissed about the loss of Jim Impoco. He's probably not too thrilled either. No one returned calls, etc. [NYO]

The second issue of Conde Nast's Portofolio - coming soon! - features a minor redesign in the front of the book. Oh, yeah, and EIC Joanne Lipman is totally not trying to poach staff from other Conde titles without permission. [WWD]

Portfolio's website has mostly avoided the intense scrutiny that the Condé Nast magazine itself has sustained. True, it's still in Beta. (But so is Google Mail, and it's been around for ages!) We wondered whether the website would prove to be fulfilling the magazine's purported mandate of "serious business journalism."

It's been two months since Conde Nast floated its first very expensive issue of Portfolio. Soon, the closing begins on the second issue. So how's it going? "It's demoralizing to work for a magazine that has such a high profile pre-launch, incredible hype about the money they're spending, and great names," said one person familiar with the workings and friendly with the staff of the magazine. "Then they come out with an issue that everybody slams. It was such a profound misfire that you'd have to think that everybody there doesn't know what kind of magazine they need to do."

In late March, as hubbub about Kurt Eichenwald's involvement with his main source for his blockbuster New York Times internet kiddie porn expose refused to die down (due in part to his threatening his critics with lawsuits), WWD ran an item saying that Eichenwald's first story for his new employers at Portfolio had been held from the debut issue. According to those accounts, the magazine didn't want Eichenwald's NYT problems overshadowing its first issue, though easily they just might not have room for the piece, as the magazine over-commissions wildly. Now sources inside the magazine confirm that the piece will not be running in the second issue, and they suggest it most likely will not be running at all.

The Observer brings word of an e-mail sent by Conde Nast supremo S.I. Newhouse to Portfolio EIC Joanne Lipman in praise of the publication's first issue. They also note that "a second S.I. love letter was read by Lipman at last night's staff party." The first memo is here, the second follows.

Let us begin with the cover of Portfolio. It's a gilded city image, a metropolis of lit-up office windows in earth tones, oddly, as it is supposed to be an homage to Berenice Abbott. (A funny reference, as she was told that New York City was too toxic for her to live in and so she left.) Publisher David Carey and Editor in Chief Joanne Lipman are shown in the Times this morning comparing their cover favorably to a recent Fortune cover, with Carey saying, "We're not giving you peas and carrots. We want to capture that glamour." By that measure things are certainly already a success; the magazine certainly weighs as much as Glamour.

• Can Don Imus maintain his moneymaking capabilities? 'Cause otherwise he's just some loudmouth hick in a hat. [NYT]
  

It's been nine months since Joanna Lipman left The Wall Street Journal to found that new business-focused magazine for Conde Nast and, according to WWD's Sara James, the damned thing finally has a title. It'll be called Quote. Unless, that is, it's called Portfolio. Or perhaps File, or Currency.