What do the McKinsey folks have in store for Condé Nast?

McKinsey has just started rolling up its sleeves at Condé Nast, which means the denizens of 4 Times Square probably won't learn for a few months what the outcome will be. Condé isn't a stranger to the ways of the consulting firm; it had its fingerprints on the reorg of parent Advance Publications' business units and the move of some back-office functions to Delaware a few years ago, according to people who were there at the time. McKinsey is probably best known for its longtime association with Time Inc., though, where it helped the company outsource IT, consolidate data centers and evaluated edit costs, and generally "interviewed everyone to death," recalls a Time Inc. vet. At Condé, McKinsey is sure to look at how to ferret out expenses that escaped the knife in an earlier cost reduction. Some speculate that could take the form of reducing the frequency of some magazines (a biweekly New Yorker?) and consolidating functions common to multiple titles, like fact-checking. But if the company is to survive and thrive beyond this unprecedented downturn, a fundamental rethinking seems in order. Condé Nast is at a watershed moment. An outsider familiar with both the publisher and McKinsey put it this way: "It needs to decide what it wants to be. Can the fundamental style of the company be sustained? Can it produce these wonderful publications at a much lower cost?" If this person's prediction comes true, Condé may ditch some of its smaller pubs and hold on to its crown jewels, like Vogue and Vanity Fair. Time will tell.

—Posted by Lucia Moses