—Digital share declines: He’s loved magazines since collecting Marvel (NYSE: MVL) comics as a boy, but Newhouse admits there are “a few problems on the horizon” for the industry now: “Magazines’ share of advertising spend is gently declining as digital media takes more of marketing budgets.” He said mags’ global share of total ad spend had declined from 14 percent in 2003 to 11 percent now, though he added the caveat that all traditional media are feeling the pinch from digital’s rise.

—Media diversification: Newhouse said it was now inevitable that “some of the reader attention that now goes to magazines will now go to other media: websites, social networks, mobile telephones, publicly placed video and probably media which have yet to be invented yet”. He’s suitably convinced that e-readers are part the future, especially when the price of manufacturing comes down while mobile phones will become “as important if not important than the computer” for publishers and “any publisher that is not developing mobile content is taking a risk”.

—Global saturation: The global success of brands like Cosmopolitan, Elle and Conde Nast’s own GQ is proof enough for Newhouse of the enduring value of printed magazines. But he admits Conde Nast’s international drive may be reaching its peak: “There is only one planet Earth; there is only one US; there is only one Russia… We have expanded our key products into the richest and highest potential markets.” There are exceptions—the company recently launched a UK edition of Wired, but generally Newhouse admits it has lost its “ability to expand into virgin markets… unless we find readers on Mars.”