For reasons not clear to me, I’ve been receiving issues of Portfolio magazine as though I’m a subscriber. They’ve been uniformly awful and read like a third-tier college newspaper’s take on The New Yorker. This is a public service announcement: do not buy Portfolio magazine under any circumstances or for any reason. Megan McArdle agrees:

I keep waiting for Portfolio not to be a terrible, terrible magazine, and I keep being disappointed. It’s supposed to be aimed at the high-end financier, but it reads more like it was written for women who want to date high-end financiers, and need a little cocktail party chat to keep things going until they can invite him back for some cognac.

The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The Economist are all out there. There is no reason for Portfolio to be as well.