Abandon shoot

• By CAROL ANNE BLITZER
• Published: Feb 12, 2009 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:40 a.m.

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Dara Caponigro, Lauren Goodman and Eugenia Santiesteban will never forget Baton Rouge.

The three editors of Domino magazine were completing a photo shoot Jan. 28 at Magnolia Mound Plantation when they got the news that Domino was folding and they were all out of jobs.

“It’s devastating,” said Goodman, Domino’s fashion director.

Domino, which was first published in April 2005, is a shopping and home décor magazine advertised as a “guide to living with style.”

Even though rumors of the impending death of Domino had been circulating for a month or two, the editors had never heard anything official. They say they were all surprised when the news came.

Editor-in-Chief Deborah Needleman will also be leaving Condé Nast Publications, publisher of Domino.

“We tried to create a marriage between the beautiful image magazines and the useful service magazines,” she said in a Jan. 28 New York Times interview. “Editorially, we did what we set out to do, and in this economy, sadly, that’s not enough.”

This is the second time Goodman has worked on a Condé Nast magazine that has folded.

“They say in journalism, three things is a trend,” Goodman said. “That means I have one more to go.”

She talked with Needleman the night before the closing was announced.

“I don’t think anyone on the Domino staff knew,” said Goodman. “Deborah told me she loved the cover of the March issue. I don’t think she knew a thing.”

Apparently everyone on the Domino staff received an e-mail asking them to attend a company meeting at 11 a.m. that Wednesday. That’s when they got the news.

Co-workers in New York called the editors in Baton Rouge. They were just wrapping up five days of shooting a feature on American prairie style, the domestic style of the American Southwest in the early 20th century.