Anna Wintour is the embodiment of the glorious years of the magazine dynasty. Now she is promoting her global digital future.

From left: Condé Nast Entertainment President Zhu Yin; Condé Nast Global Chief Content Officer, American Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour; and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch. Credit... Dana Scruggs for The New York Times

Anna Wintour has been the chief editor of Vogue since 1988 and is known for her iconic Bob and permanent sunglasses and strict taste, and in many ways is the embodiment of Condé Nast's luxurious history as a fashion arbiter. Now that she is selling its future, the editor-in-chief she helped define is a relic, and the company's operating guidelines include the following motto: "Excellence does not mean exclusive."

"I think the beauty of working in the media lies in constant change and observing changes in things," Ms. Wintour said in an interview when Condé Nast's Manhattan Office at the World Trade Center No. 1 was basically empty. "Especially today, it moves so fast. Yes, it was great at the time, but what will happen in the future will be even more exciting."

Some Condé Nast employees are not sure whether Ms. Wintour should be part of the future. In June 2020, workers asked her if she would leave the company at a company-wide meeting. She just apologized for her role in a culture that many people consider to be marginalized by people of color because the company and the media industry are considering race and diversity.

Ms. Wintour is not going anywhere. Since then, she has been promoted to global chief content officer and presided over the company’s overall transformation as executives tried to get rid of its tradition as an outstanding magazine publisher of the last century, when the company polished its elitist brand and spared no effort Use its title.

On a refreshing autumn day, I met with Ms. Wintour (worn sunglasses) and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch to hear their vision for New Condé.

The stakes handled correctly are not just the financial survival of the company. In addition to the survival anxiety of all the old media giants about whether it is possible to remain relevant, there is a bigger question: Can Condé Nast take practical measures under pressure to solve the culture described by many employees as difficult to adapt? People of color succeed and meet the standards that have elevated European-centric beauty in the past? Can an organization that thrives by focusing on the surface can make deeper changes?

There is no doubt that this is a difficult time for the magazine industry. In the past 15 years, print ads have been stunned, and viewers no longer rely mainly on traditional brands to tell them what fashion is. In recent years, Condé Nast's US operations have lost more than 100 million U.S. dollars each year.

In 2018, Condé Nast announced the merger of its US operations with its sister company Condé Nast International to create a global company. The two companies had been operating almost completely separately before, and the European Vogue magazine or the Asian GQ edition had little to do with their American counterparts. Publications often compete with each other for the same advertisers and cover stars. Mr. Lin Qi was appointed as the global CEO in 2019 and is responsible for overseeing the merger and merging the back-end businesses to save money.

"Roger faces a very difficult company," said Steven Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast's parent company Advance Publications and a member of the billionaire family who has owned Advance for nearly 100 years.

"Unless we want to look like a museum, we must completely change," he added.

In the past year, Ms. Wintour has been focusing on the next step in this process: Condé Nast’s seven largest publications-"Fashion", "GQ", "Wired", "Architectural Digest", "Vanity Fair" , "Condé Nast Traveler" and "Glamour"-transformed into global brands, each under the leadership of a leader to cut costs and simplify content sharing across print magazines and digital platforms.

“Instead of letting 27 Vogues or 10 Vogues focus on a story, we have a global Vogue paying attention to it,” Ms. Wintour said. "So it is more like a global newsroom with different centers."

The shift in focus from local to global has not gone smoothly anywhere. Tina Brown, the former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, called the plan "suicidal" in an interview with The Times of London in August.

"Obviously some stories are valid, especially if you think about fashion, which is a global language and music, so some stories are applicable to all regions, some are definitely not," Ms. Wintour said. "We know this very well."

Ms. Wintour also made sure that there would be no more Anna Wintour-no more empire editor-in-chief, everyone has their own territory, and Ms. Wintour herself helped create a job that became fashionable but strict in fashion and culture. Gatekeeper. These brands are now run by "Global Editorial Directors", most of whom are based in New York, and the regional content leaders report to them.

"Before, you created stories for publishing, published once a month, which was great," she said, describing an old field of editors. Now, the global editorial director and content leader are working across platforms, including "digital, video, short and feature films, social, events, philanthropy, membership, consumers, e-commerce," Ms. Wintour said.

"You have come into contact with so many different worlds," she added. "Honestly, who doesn't want this job?"

In the process of change in Condé Nast, many people decided not to do so.

In the past 12 months, Condé Nast’s chief editors have left, including Emmanuelle Alt (10 years old) of Vogue Paris, Cecilia Cheung (16 years old) of Vogue China, Christiane Arp (17 years old) of Vogue Germany and the United Kingdom Dylan Jones (22 years old) of GQ. Michelle Lee of Allure and Whembley Sewell of Them, a website focused on LGBTQ, both went to work at Netflix. Lindsay Peoples Wagner, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue and the company's rising star, left The Cut in New York Magazine in January.

"We have great respect for editors who have worked with us for many years," Ms. Wintour said when asked about the mass exodus. "Some of them decided to move on and were not as satisfied with the transition as some others, but we-you know, it's time to change the company and have modern thinking."

To a large extent, Condé Nast executives are desperately getting rid of the glorious years of luxury in the past few years. No one wants to dwell on city cars, epic expense accounts, or army of assistants.

Ms. Wintour claims that there is no lingering desire-set an example and say goodbye to Old Comte. However, when it comes to the good old days and the problems of the present, some nostalgia spontaneously arises. She recalled the recent appointment of Hamish Bowles to the top position of Condé Nast's influential design magazine World of Interiors.

"When I was thinking about who we could have in this role, what impressed me was that this is a title that people archive and save. It's the best quality. It's incredible paper. It's like The standard bearer of that particular world," she said.

"I think printed matter is our fashion show," she said, adding: "It should be collectible. It should be something you want to stick to."

But the days of printing are over: Mr. Lynch described this company to me as a "main digital business", with digital advertising revenues more than print advertising revenues. But he is eager to reduce dependence on any type of advertising and increase different sources of income. Currently, most of Condé Nast's revenue comes from advertising, and consumer revenue (ie subscriptions, memberships and e-commerce) account for approximately 25%.

Therefore, the company has further advanced the video field. Last year, it hired Agnes Chu from Disney to lead its Condé Nast entertainment department, with the task of strengthening its film and television teams and producing more digital videos with global brands.

Ms. Zhu said that her strategy is focused on adding subtitles to English content distributed globally, and creating or adapting specific regional content with broader appeal. She mentioned the success of Architectural Digest’s “Door Opening” family travel video series, in which the most recent episode featuring Indian actress Sonam Kapoor Ahuja has received 12 million views on all social media platforms , Of which one-third are from outside India.

But production is an expensive business, and the huge success of the entertainment sector is relatively limited.

The executives pointed out that the Met Gala report in September was a successful implementation of their strategy: a video of the arrival of celebrities. This is a fundraising event organized by Ms. Wintour for the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly 30 years, thanks to Condé Nast Entertainment Vogue’s first live broadcast of video providing capabilities. Executives stated that it has nearly 15 million viewers on Vogue.com and its Twitter account, while additional Met Gala content has received more than 200 million views on social media.

The executives also mentioned that they are now able to execute a global social media plan to distribute interviews and fashion shots of celebrities with global appeal, such as GQ November’s Will Smith profile or Adele’s cover of the US and UK Vogue versions of the same month. .

In the end, the new strategy may sound a lot like translating past hot topics for the World Wide Web, indicating the company's slow adaptation to the digital world for its magazines.

Media director and former editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter and American Weekly, Janice Min said that Condé Nast and similar publications are trying to attract those ads by having the scale of advertisers that are large enough to compete with Google and Facebook and having the "right" audience. business.

"I think if there is no elitism, no old-school top-down method of telling the world what to wear and what to think, Condé Nast will face the risk of becoming another white label content farm on the Internet," she said. In a world that needs fairness, how do you stay special and unique?"

Condé Nast said it is taking equity seriously. Ms. Wintour pointed out that the reorganization of the editorial team is an opportunity to promote new leaders with different views, such as Margaret Zhang (Margaret Zhang) who now leads "Vogue China" or GQ Global Deputy Editor-in-Chief Adam. Adam Baidawi.

"I am an Iraqi who grew up in the southern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia," Mr. Bidawi said in a video interview. "How many Iraqi surnames or even vague Middle Eastern surnames do you think I saw on the mastheads of my favorite brands?"

He is passionate about more collaborative ways of working, and he says that different perspectives are "really incorporated" because people from all over the world are contributing and debating ideas.

He said: "The lack of diversity is tiresome, it's not enough." "We are in the creative industry, and more diversity means better ideas."

Mr. Bidawi said that Condé Nast is now operating in a more modern way.

"For my entire career, wherever I go, people have told me that I missed the golden age of luxury media, which was extremely romantic:'Adam, there is a city car, a private jet, and a budget for re-shooting,'" He said, adding, "Frankly, I'm not interested in chasing ghosts or regaining past glory."

Leslie Sun, the editorial director of Vogue Asia Pacific, said that she believes that the new Condé Nast is "almost like a new dynasty" and this is an opportunity for her to attract attention to her region.

"Of course, we all know that culture is only born in the United States or Europe, or that a country will define art, fashion or culture for the rest of the world. This is completely incorrect," she said.

The company launched the "Kant Code" in September 2020, which is a set of five-pronged values ​​that states that "diversity is our strength" as part of the company's internal efforts to address racism. Around the same time, Yashica Olden, Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, was hired and the company released its first diversity report. (A spokeswoman said that the second report will be released early next year. The spokeswoman added that nearly 40% of the company's new employees in 2020 and nearly half of the top editors in the United States are people of color.)

At the same time, employees across the company are pushing for broader changes. Four publications—The New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, and Pitchfork—have formed a union with NewsGuild in the past few years, and NewsGuild also represents employees of The New York Times and other media organizations. After intense public negotiations, Condé Nast recently reached an agreement with three of the unions, including a protest outside Wintour’s townhouse in Greenwich Village.

According to two current staff and a former employee of Condé Nast, the staff of the remaining publications, including "Vogue", are now organizing and planning to announce that they are forming a union soon.

Condé Nast's new strategy is deeply rooted in the financial headwinds facing the company. Mr. Lynch said the plan is working and shared new figures to prove it. He said that the company will achieve breakeven in 2021, one year ahead of schedule, and is expected to achieve profitability in 2023. This is partly due to the surge in digital advertising revenue, which increased by 56% year-on-year. He added that the third quarter of this year.

According to a person familiar with the company's financial details, this year's US revenue is expected to exceed 1 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of nearly 150 million U.S. dollars over the previous year. Mr. Lynch said his plan includes a 25% increase in investment in news and content production.

"Our plan allows us to invest more in content, not less. But the way we fund at least part of it is that we eliminate things that don't add value to viewers or advertisers," he said. "This is just a duplication of cost."

Chairman Newhouse stated that Advance is excited about the progress made by Mr. Lynch’s strategy and is not interested in selling Condé Nast.

"We have a very thoughtful and convincing plan that will take us to 2026, and we are ready to execute it," he said, adding that part of the plan includes "considering acquisitions, partnerships, and everything that requires capital. ."

As Condé Nast employees begin to return to the office (currently voluntary), they will encounter a company with a completely different structure than before the pandemic. They will see the 72-year-old Ms. Wintour, who has overcome all the rumors of leaving office, consolidated power, and is in the office almost every day.

"Now, I am focusing on today," she said when asked if she plans to leave the company soon.

"She can't retire before me," Mr. Lynch interrupted him with a smile.