Quotable

So next week the branded lid will finally come off the much-anticipated new business publication from the glossy folks at Conde Nast. It’s a reasonable bet the magazine will be called Quote, considering the source of the news — Conde Nast-owned WWD and half of its ace media reporting team of Sara James and Jeff Bercovic. (Sara had this one.)

At a time when ad pages are down and ad revenue flat for the biz books from a year ago*, i.e., Business Week, ad revenue down 18.1%/ad pages down 12.5%; Fortune, ad revenue up 4.4%/ ad pages down 1.5%; Forbes, ad revenue up 1.2%/ ad pages down 3.5%; The Economist ad revenue up 9.4%/ ad pages down 2.2%., many will question the wisdom of bowing yet another new biz book (and the requisite ad-driven website) in this tepid climate.

Nonetheless, the talented Joanne Lipman (pictured) was lured away from the venerable Journal with carte blanche and a mandate to make her mark with de rigeur content covering all the cool companies the conde cognascenti crave. In other words, Quote should be quotable, but with few industrial manufacturers among them.

* Source: PIB April 2006 versus April 2005