One of our keynote presentations at the virtual FOLIO: Show Virtual last week included a panel of leading executives in the industry, including F+W Media CEO David Nussbaum.

Nussbaum gave one of the most provocative responses during the hour-long discussion, essentially saying that print advertising is an irrevocably declining source of revenue, and that companies that don’t recognize that do so at their own risk.

As it turns out, Nussbaum jotted down some notes to the questions I asked the panelists to consider in advance. Here are Nussbaum’s no More...

It’s been a whirlwind year for high-end Southern lifestyle magazine Garden & Gun. In January, rumors swirled that it was on course to run out of money and go out of business. Less than two months later, the magazine was acquired by Indigo Acquisition LLC, a company co-created by publisher Rebecca Darwin—effectively tossing the title a lifeline saving it from going out of business.

So why haven’t readers received their October/November issue? It was due out in mid-October and—nada. In an e-mail sent to readers Thursday, Darwin explained what happened:

To help shore up our business for 2010 and beyond, More...

During the American Business Media Executive Forum in New York yesterday, BusinessWeek chief economist Michael Mandel gave long suffering publishers some hope by saying he believes there is a "media boom" coming in which marketers will reinvest in many of the traditional channels they've cut back.

The ABM Executive Forum was held in place of ABM's usual Chicago-based Top Management Meeting, and drew around 200 attendees. 

Other speakers weren't so sure about Mandel's forecast. "I don't think print will ever come back, it will probably stay at the current level," said Anthea Stratigos, co-founder and CEO of Outsell Inc.

Stratigos also threw cold water on paid content. "Paid content could be More...

On Wednesday, Purpose Driven Connection—the quarterly published in partnership between Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren and the Reader’s Digest Association—became the latest magazine casualty of 2009 as the groups decided to move the product online-only. Until September, RDA said the title, which launched in January, was still in “development stages.” After four issues it was never green-lighted for a full launch off the newsstand.

What gives? When RDA announced the launch late last year, it billed the agreement with Warren and Saddleback More...

From Barnes & Noble's promising nook to dark horses such as the EnTourage eDGe, a bevy of e-reader devices are about to take on Amazon.com's groundbreaking Kindle. They won't transform the way most folks read immediately, but they're a major step in the inevitable, ongoing digitization of nearly everything we're used to reading on on dead trees. As a reader of fat hardcover books I can't fit in my briefcase, I'm a Kindle fan who's excited about seeing Amazon get some compet More...

As part of its “Game Changers” package, the editors at the Huffington Post have come up with a list of the 10 biggest innovators in media—people or organizations that are using the Web to change the industry. Some of the more well-known names on the list include CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Katie Couric for launching Web-based interview program @katiecouric, and Tina Brown for transitioning from print to online for launching The Daily Beast.

Visitors can More...

If there is one area suffering almost as much as print, it's events. While trade show revenue dropped 3.5 percent in 2008, it fell a whopping 20.1 percent through the first quarter of 2009, according to American Business Media. Reed Exhibitions (which operates independently of Reed Business Information), saw revenue and adjusted operating profits plunge 22 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in the first half of the year.

Nielsen Business Media vp of business development Eric Biener says events haven't fallen as much as print but when they do, it hurts more. "Even small declines have a huge impact on our infrastructure, More...

I was thumbing through the November issue of Wired recently when I stumbled across an article on Demand Media, penned by senior writer Daniel Roth (one of my favorite Wired writers). It’s a detailed look at how the online network has successfully leveraged a user-generated content model and become the largest supplier of videos to YouTube. According to the report, Demand rakes in roughly $200 million a year and was valued in a recent round of financing at $1 billion.

Demand is reported More...

Where smaller publishers—from b-to-b to consumer enthusiast—form consortiums to attain economies of scale for materials and production services like printing, paper buying and distribution, the mass consumer publishers are setting aside their historically fierce competitiveness to tackle mass problems.  

Across-the-board ad page and revenue drops, online-sourced subscriptions, pay wall models, and digital content formats and distribution are some of the latest battles that big consumer publishers think can be won through solidarity.

It's an interesting concept that can be traced back to then Hachette CEO Jack Kliger's outspoken calls for pre-recession unity to revolutionize rate base—magazines needed to stop competin More...

The games we play change over time. I wonder if my favorite magazine game has gone the way of stickball and “kick the can.”

When I worked at Ziff-Davis in the 1980’s I was fortunate enough to be placed in a “loop course” type of specialized circulation class taught by the VP of Circulation and one of the industry’s most outrageous old school characters, Larry Sporn. Larry taught us a simple little game called “newsstand shuffle.” Basically, all you had to do was go to a newsstand, browse the magazines, and accidentally place your companies’ titles on top of your competitors’ magazines. The trick was to make sure y More...

In this down economy, it isn’t any big surprise that automotive and financial have been two of the hardest-hit markets. Out of the 12 advertising categories tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau, they saw the steepest declines through the first nine months, with ad pages falling 47.3 percent and 47 percent, respectively.

Another industry that’s taken a beating this year is boating. I was reading the editor’s note yesterday on boating trade publication Soundings Trade Only’s Web site, written by Bill Siss More...

Here at FOLIO:, we receive a sizable number of magazines in our mailboxes every day. Needless to say, we notice when a title touts a particularly interesting, out-of-the-box concept. So when Latina, a women’s service title geared toward young, bilingual women, scrapped its typical cover model concept and debuted two poster-quality, Viva Mexico covers, it didn’t go unnoticed by us—or new advertisers.

“This beautiful country is not all H1N1, drug wars and violence. Mexico is so much more and this issue serves as a reminder,” said Mimi Valdés Ryan, Latina’s editorial More...