The publisher plans to start selling digital copies of its print titles via a yet-to-be-approved app. Condé will start with the December issue of GQ, which it will sell for $2.99 (versus a newsstand price of $4.99), but the idea is that the publisher can use the same technology to sell other issues of other magazines down the road.

Condé says the GQ digital issue will replicate the print one on a page-by-page basis, including the ads. Digital bonuses include related videos, as well as links to sites for products (clothing, music, etc.) featured in the issue.

I wasn’t able to attend Condé’s presentation this morning, so I can’t tell you how its attempt to transfer a rich glossy magazine onto a phone (or iPod touch) actually works. But for now, I’ll take the company’s word for it and assume that it’s a nice alternative to carrying around some dead trees.

The interesting question is the business model, which I think has some real potential. This doesn’t solve Condé’s core problem–its costs are too high to support its shrinking ad revenue–but it does have several things going for it.

For one, this approach reaches its potential readers where they are: I don’t want to read a magazine at my desk, and I’m far from sold on the idea of buying a specialized reader to consume it digitally. Getting it to me on my phone, which goes wherever I do, is the way to go.

It also generates some (potential) additional revenue for Condé Nast right off the bat without creating a channel conflict with its analog product line: Condé will be able to count any magazines sold via its app platform toward its audited circulation numbers, a trick that no publisher has been able to pull off with Web products so far. Meanwhile advertisers in the print publication who want to add digital links to the iPhone version will pay a premium, Condé says. And the publisher has been able to extract additional dollars from Grey Goose and Gillette, which will be “premium sponsors” of the GQ issue.

Bonus upside: Condé says the technology it has assembled for this effort should work well for future Apple (AAPL) products, like, say, its mythical tablet. “We think that the minute Apple is ready, if they ever are, to announce that they’re going forward with a tablet, that we’ll be ahead of everybody,” says Sarah Chubb, president of Condé Nast Digital.

This doesn’t solve the distribution issue that Condé and other publishers have with Apple, Amazon (AMZN) and other potential digital delivery outfits: Apple, not Condé, will control the billing relationship for the app. But then again, Condé doesn’t get to interact with you when you buy a magazine at a newsstand either, so at least it’s not getting disintermediated.

The question, as always, is whether customers are willing to pay anything at all for content they’ve been getting free on the Web. I still think we’re going to end up with a small segment of people willing to pay up for specialized stuff and a very large group that are going to end up with free things of dubious value. It would be great to be proved wrong, though.

Condé has tapped former Wired publisher and current New Yorker publisher Drew Schutte to be Condé Nast Digital’s chief revenue officer, a newly created position. The appointment follows last month’s (apparently) bloodless reorg of Condé’s digital properties, which are now consolidated under Sarah Chubb. Here’s a summary from Advertising Age’s Nat Ives, who broke the story:

Mr. Schutte was tapped to lead The New Yorker in January 2008 but was never as successful there–in an admittedly terrible year for most magazines–as in his previous role overseeing Wired magazine and Wired Digital. The New Yorker’s ad pages declined 26.8 percent last year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Mr. Schutte wouldn’t necessarily have an easier job at Condé Nast Digital. Condé Nast is above all a magazine company, one whose efforts to build revenue online have not gained a lot of traction yet. Condé Nast Digital itself is a new formulation of company strategy in the area.

Condé, publisher of major titles such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, enjoyed a period of double-digit revenue growth earlier this decade, but the recession ended that. The company’s cooler, calmer approach–a departure from earlier years–also seems to have suffered. Last week Condé shut down Domino magazine.”

Ad Age recently estimated that Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc., the magazine company that has made the biggest strides in moving its properties online, is making more than 10 percent of its revenues from the Web. Time Warner reported yesterday that Time Inc. had seen a $57 million increase in annual sales from its digital properties last year.

Condé Press Release:

February 5, 2009 (New York, NY) — Drew Schutte has been named Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer of Condé Nast Digital, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and C.E.O. of Condé Nast.  This newly created position takes effect immediately.

Mr. Schutte will be responsible for all sales and marketing for Condé Nast Digital. He will manage the newly consolidated digital sales team and work closely with the publishers on integrated sales throughout all of the company’s titles.

“Drew has a proven track record of selling online and print—as well as an understanding of the complexity of selling integrated campaigns–which makes him uniquely qualified for the job,” Mr. Townsend said.

Mr. Schutte became VP & Publisher of The New Yorker in January 2007. Previously he was VP & Publishing Director of Wired Media. He joined the magazine in 1994 as West Coast Advertising Manager.  Before joining Wired, Mr. Schutte spent three years at Business Week based in San Francisco. Prior to that he was East Coast Manager for PC Week and West Coast Manager for Inc.

Mr. Townsend also announced that Lisa Hughes is being named Vice President & Publisher of The New Yorker. Her position is effective immediately.

“Lisa is an experienced publisher, a strategic thinker, and an innovative marketer who is inherently well suited to lead the business side of The New Yorker,” Mr. Townsend said.

Ms. Hughes has been Vice President & Publisher of Condé Nast Traveler since 1995 and has guided it through some of its most successful years. In 2008, Condé Nast Traveler was named to both Adweek’s “Hotlist” and Advertising Age’s “A-List.” Previously, she held positions as VP & Publisher of House & Garden, and as Associate Publisher of Vanity Fair.  Ms. Hughes began her career at Condé Nast in sales at Mademoiselle.

Condé Nast, a unit of Advance Publications, includes twenty-three consumer magazines, Condé Nast Digital, the Fairchild Fashion Group, Parade, the Condé Nast Media Group, and the Shared Services Centers.

The company plans on announcing the details of the reorg tomorrow, but here’s the most important one: The reshuffling won’t result in any layoffs, a person familiar with the situation tells me.

That’s nice for Condé’s employees, who already went through cuts last fall. But it’s also puzzling: If merging all of Condé’s Web operations into one group doesn’t eliminate a single redundancy, then what does it do?

Perhaps not that much. AdAge’s Nat Ives, whom Condé briefed on the move, explains the upshot:

Some things also stay the same. Condé Nast Digital will handle day-to-day contact with digital advertisers, but the Condé Nast Media Group retains the lead on most relationships. The magazines’ high-powered publishers aren’t getting any new incentives to sell digital. And everyone remembers that print still brings in almost all the revenue; digital absorbed at least its fair share of staff cuts that concluded 2008.

But Condé Nast executives point to the recession to explain why it’s finally found religion. ‘This economic experience that we are going through has sobered us up considerably,’ [Condé Nast CEO Charles] Townsend said. ‘To get back to double-digit growth, we have to put our digital assets to work hard. I am hoping that the print business will recover to double-digit growth, but I am convinced that the digital business will grow exponentially.’”

The problem here is that unlike Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc, Condé only has a few properties, liked Wired.com, that have enough scale to attract digital advertisers. Most of the ones associated with magazine titles, like Gourmet.com, VanityFair.com, etc., are simply too small to register.

And as long as Condé remains a magazine publisher that happens to have some Web properties, it’s hard to see how that will change.

Here’s the deal: If you work at a media company that hasn’t had layoffs recently, just go ahead and assume they’re coming.

This afternoon’s installment–CondéNet, which manages some, but not all, of media giant Condé Nast’s Web operations, is cutting staff “across the board.”

Which means not just cuts at Wired.com, as Alley Insider reported earlier this afternoon, but also sites like Epicurious and Style.com.

The company wouldn’t announce how many people are being let go.

But here is the official statement, from a CondéNet spokesperson:

Visibility for 2009 is very limited and we are adjusting all costs to prepare for slower revenue growth. The adjustments are across the board and include staff restructuring and some reduction. Despite the current environment, CondéNet will end the year slightly up over 2007. These moves will put the company in a stronger position to handle a challenging year ahead and for the business to benefit when the economy and the ad market start to rebound.”

This follows cuts at Condé Nast’s print titles last month, so it’s not that much of a shock.

A person familiar with the situation tells me that the CondéNet took longer to make its cuts because it hadn’t gotten a grip on 2008 sales and 2009 projections.

Now it has: The unit won’t hit its internal goal of 35 percent revenue growth for 2008, but should still “outperform the market,” I’m told. What I’m not told–whether that means the broader market for Web ads and display ads only.

Next year, the CondéNet group, run by Sarah Chubb (pictured above) expects a “modest” increase in revenue–likely something in high single or low double-digits.

As always, I’m happy to update my posts as I learn more. If you’ve got information on specific titles or people cut, please drop me a line. As always, I keep all correspondence anonymous: peter@allthingsd.com.

A second source says they’ve been told the staff will shrink down to three people and that a “plan would be worked out in the next couple of days.”

Also unclear: Which one of Condé’s digital units will end up adopting the Web site. Portfolio.com had been run as a standalone property. That made it a rarity at Condé, where most of magazines’ digital arms are run by its Magnet unit, and the rest are run by Sarah Chubb’s CondéNet group.

Confused? So are most Condé Nast staffers, who spend lots of time complaining about the publisher’s byzantine digital architecture. But you won’t hear them complaining too loudly right now–they’re trying to hang on to their jobs, or at least protect their exit packages.

Web site staffers were told about the cuts in a meeting led by General Manager Ari Brandt and publisher David Carey, who didn’t provide much detail, according to people who attended the meeting.

Portfolio.com staffers have been told they have been meeting their revenue goals for 2008 while the magazine has not. According to a person who attended the meeting, one of the staff’s braver souls asked Carey why the Web site was being punished more severely than the magazine.

“He gave a sort of corporate-speak answer, and what it appeared to boil down to is, is ‘This is a magazine company,’” says a person who attended the meeting. ”And it left the impression that the Web site was sacrificed to save the magazine.”

In a separate meeting, Portfolio magazine editor Joanne Lipman told her staff that the publication would cut some positions and publish 10 times a year instead of monthly.

UPDATE: A partial list of departing Portfolio staffers.

Time Warner’s Time Inc. (TWX) won’t be the only magazine publisher making cuts this fall: Condé Nast is trimming its sails, too.

The New York Observer reports that every title at the privately held publisher is being required to cut five percent from both its editorial and business ledgers, a number that MediaMemo hasn’t been able to confirm.

But I can tell you that the staff at Portfolio, Condé’s business magazine launched with equal parts fanfare and controversy last year, has been summoned to an all-hands meetings that should be starting … now. I’ll pass along more details as I get them.

UPDATE: A partial list of departing Portfolio staffers.

Recall that just two days ago Condé Nast publisher David Carey was expressing (guarded) optimism about advertising budgets next year. I’m guessing that if he were less optimistic, the cuts would be even larger.

And what about CondéNet, the Condé division that handles Web properties for some, but not all, of the publisher’s magazines? No comment, but one might imagine Sarah Chubb’s unit will be cutting back, too.

UPDATE: Condé is firing most of the staff of Portfolio.com, shrinking it from two dozen down to “single digits.”

UPDATE: I’m told that Portfolio staff has just been told the magazine will now be published 10 times a year, down from 12, and will cut five percent from its edit budget. (A second source says that will amount to 18 to 20 staffers) The December and January issues will be combined, as will the June and July issues.

UPDATE: One officially announced cut: Men’s Vogue will be shrunk down to a twice-yearly schedule. The one-paragraph release:

Men’s Vogue will be absorbed into Vogue and published in the spring and fall, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and C.E.O of Condé Nast Publications. It will continue to be edited by Jay Fielden.”

Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair.