FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Shaquille O’Neal, the 7-foot-1, 325-pound, 37-year-old Phoenix Suns center, was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers late yesterday, uniting him with Lebron James, the NBA’s reigning MVP.

O’Neal, one of the most followed celebrities on Twitter (current follower count: 1.4 million), responded via tweets early this morning that he was unaware of the trade, which promptly send Twitterville and those who monitor it into a (sorry) twizzy.

Here’s a recap via TechCrunch:

Look at Shaq’s More...

Hudson News is at it again.

The company, which operates more than 500 newsstands in major cities, airports and train stations—including New York’s Grand Central Terminal—is treating GQ’s July issue, which features a nude Sacha Baron Cohen (as his flamboyantly gay Brüno character) on its cover “like pornography,” according to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog.

The newsstand took the liberty of covering up the bottom half of the July cover with a black “blinder.”

While it might More...

A couple years ago, when YouTube and Facebook were leading the buzz-y social media charge (not Twitter), plenty of magazine publishers, envious of their size, traffic and influence, would talk at length during publishing conferences about their plans to create Facebooks and YouTubes for their own verticals.  (For some background, see this FOLIO: 40 profile.)

And while some still are, many—particularly those overseeing general interest titles—have given up that dream of building their own platforms from scratch.

I recently spoke with Rex Hammock—Ham More...

Earlier today, the New York Times published a story about the Reader's Digest Association, suggesting the publishers of its flagship magazine were "pushing it in a decidedly conservative direction."

Our story, also posted today, focused on the business decision by RDA to slash its rate base by 2.5 million copies and reduce its monthly frequency by two issues. We spoke wi More...

Like the ShamWow guy, magazine publishers are looking to soak up as much revenue as physically possible these days. And, since many are increasingly OK with ads on covers (46 percent, according to our recent FOLIOmag.com poll, think they’re a “legitimate business opportunity”), more are looking to that piece of once-virgin real estate. But, since there is still a majority (51 percent, according to the poll) of publishers not OK with ads on covers, some are doing it discreetly.

First there was Vice—which used glow in the dark ink More...

This note was circulated internally to Time Inc. employees today:

________________________________________

From: Moore, Ann
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:06 PM
Subject: How to Put the Genie Back Into the Bottle; Special Assignment for John Squires

June 16, 2009

To:       Time Inc. Employees
From:   Ann Moore
Re:       How to Put the Genie Back Into the Bottle; Special Assignment for John Squires

It won’t be a revelation to any of you that the publishing business is changing rapidly. While print magazines are not going away, and while we have built vibrant websites with over 26 million unique visitors and 750 million pages views each month, it’ More...

In college, I got my eyebrow pierced. (I know, I was just going to go with the ear or nose, but, of course, wanted to be on the leading edge of cool.) A week later I applied for a summer job at an EMS-style outdoor store in Burlington, Vermont.

Got hired. Showed up my first day. Store manager says, “Hey, what’s that? I must’ve missed it in your interview. You gotta take it out.”

Take it out? We’re in frickin’ Vermont!

I needed the job, so I did—even though my “pierce-ist” (right?) said it would close up and be very painful to put back in every night (it was—so much so that More...

MyShot, National Geographic’s popular social hub that allows users to submit and vote on photos, and YourShot, the related submission site—have been two of the magazine industry’s few unmitigated successes on the Web.

Now, the magazine is offering readers an opportunity to customize the cover of a special print issue—National Geographic’s Your Shot—that will feature “101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years.”

Wired, y More...

An interior page on Newsweek.com today

When FOLIO: first published the story that Newsweek was mulling a dramatic drop in circulation along with an equally dramatic overhaul, we noted that the magazine was loosely modeling its relaunch after the Economist—which occupies a “thought-leader” position editor Jon Meacham (and Time editor Richard Stengel, for that matter) not-so-secretly covets. Now that both the magazine and Web site have More...

Huffington, with (presumably) one of her unpaid bloggers (Herbie Hancock), in 2007

NEW YORK—When Syracuse University’s Newhouse School announced that it would be giving a lifetime achievement award at the Mirror Awards to Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, for her contribution as a journalist to the profession of media, there was immediate criticism. Huffington, after all, has been widely criticized for not paying bloggers.  Via Romene More...

When I first heard that editor Jon Meacham got Stephen Colbert, the fake talk show host, to guest edit the New Newsweek, I thought, “Hey, that could be pretty funny.”

Then I thought about it a little more. “Wait, this is Newsweek—a real, non-fake news magazine.” Wouldn’t it be a little like getting Sacha Baron Cohen, in “Borat” character, to guest-edit Travel + Leisure? Colbert is, after all, a character, although the degree to which his character’s satire differs from his own can be debated.

Then I thought, “Oh, who cares? It’s just a magazine.”

Well, Meacham cared enough that he felt the need t More...

Need, a small, Minneapolis, Minnesota-based “humanitarian” magazine, is struggling with the advertising downturn—just like the "inhumane" ones.

But after hearing about the initial success of the “Save Paste” campaign ('Save Paste' Campaign Raises $166,000) founder Kelly Kinnunen says the magazine decided to launch a campaign of its own—"ScrewTheMan, SaveTheWorld.”

“The concept was to not only save ourselves, but at the same time promote our end mission of inspiring humanitarian action,” Kinnunen say More...