FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

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...

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...

Recently, FOLIOmag.com did a story on Waukesha, Wisconsin-based enthusiast publisher Kalmbach Publishing Co. buying Cabin Life. It was a small deal, the type that pops up several times a week (or used to before M&A crashed along with everything else), yet it generated a volume of reads usually associated with stories about much larger transactions. Or lay-offs. Or Cygnus Business Media.

Why? Because Kalmbach, which publishes 15 special interest magazines with total circulation of 1 million plus, knows what they are and what they need to be, even amidst the changes of the More...

A new study says magazine advertising drives consumer attitudes and intended behavior more effectively than viewing television advertising on its own or seeing TV and online messages together.

Researcher Dynamic Logic recently updated its database of client-commissioned accountability studies, which look at how television, magazine, and online influence consumers as they go through five stages of the buying process (or "purchase funnel") and released the findings in a new white paper called "Assessing Ad Impact: How TV, Online and Magazines Contribute Throughout the Purchase Funnel."

Takeaways include:

There's a disturbing trend that seems to be growing with publishing companies cutting staff. Not just the cutting (although that's certainly disturbing enough) but attempts to portray cuts as something other than what they really are.

It happened earlier this year with Johnson Publishing, which denied making layoffs but required employees to reapply for new positions within the company.

Most recently, FOLIO: senior online editor Jason Fell asked Advanstar CEO Joe Loggia about reports of 80 lay-offs and was told, "You can't really categorize things a More...

It may not feel like it but magazines may be a relatively safer gig compared to other journalist jobs. According to Unity's 2009 Lay-off Tracker Report, a survey from Unity Journalists of Color, there has been a 22 percent increase in the number of journalist jobs lost every month from September 2008 through August 2009. That's three times more than the national average, in which jobs were lost at an 8 percent rate each month.

The report says the news industry has lost 35,885 jobs since Sept. 15, 2008 and 46,599 jobs since Unity began tracking journalist cuts since January 1, 2008.

While much of the report pertains to the newspaper industry, no se More...

Sometimes you gotta laugh: Darlene Koenig has created a Facebook gift app called "Worthless Gifts for Print Veterans." The faux gifts run the gamut from relics of the print age (TTS Punched Tape, Layout Desk Proportion Wheel) to (non)-inspirational fare such as "Journalist as Folk Hero" (a copy of "All the President's Men"), "Disappearing Editorial Cartoonist" and a George Carlin-inspired "Deadline Volley of Profanity."

Still, it's nice to know More...

Stories of bloated CEO compensation abound (a recent Newsweek article says that the pay ratio between CEOs and employees of the companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 is now 319 to 1) and a recent FOLIO: blog revealed that Reader's Digest CEO Mary Berner is getting $125,000 per month while RDA is in bankruptcy (and a $2.23 million severance package if her contract is not renewed when the company emerges from bankruptcy).

However, an increasing number of consumer CEOs who also own their own companies are More...

Magazine editors, for the most part, saw salaries rise in 2008. But with many publishers turning to salary freezes or salary cuts (often as steep as 25 percent) editors are expecting a significant decline of possibly 10 percent or more, according to the 2009 FOLIO: Editorial Salary Survey, conducted by Readex Research.

And while most editors have seen their workload take a significant jump, thanks to more digital assignments, that's not yet reflected in salaries. "Closing down print products could be smart from a cost standpoint but getting big dollars from online is a challenge, which could result in cuts in pay and staff," said one respondent.

Look for more on the Edit survey in FOLIO:'s September issue. In More...

Financial new site 24/7 Wall Street has released a new report grading the top 20 consumer magazine Web sites. The sites are rated "A" through "F" based on strength of content; ease of use and navigation; use of technology and online tools including comment sections, message boards and multimedia; layout; a strong advertiser presence and size of audience (based on data from Compete.com and Nielsen Netview).

The listing on 24/7 Wall Street's site is confusing with the sites ranked 1-20 based not on the Web site grades or even online traffic but the magazine's print circulation. Below, we've reworked the order according to More...

The wisdom of paid online content is still debatable but blog sponsorships and paid content are the most profitable e-media revenue streams, with more than 50 percent of respondents saying they see a profit margin of more than 30 percent from these two products, according to the 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey.

However, just eight percent of publishers sell sponsorships against blogs and only 28 percent offer paid content.

Of course, that doesn’t mean blogs and paid content are generating significant revenue at this point. Paid content was the fourth largest e-media revenue stream for magazine publishers today (banner advertising remains the largest).

However, 32 percent of respondents said banner adv More...

While the Iranian government has barred established media organizations from the country, it's having less success with onsite, organic reporting being transmitted online (despite attempts to slow connection speeds and government-sanctioned hackers trashing Web sites and threatening posters).

Many media outlets are turning to Twitter for coverage, including the Atlantic, which has averaged more than one million page views each day this week thanks in large part to its continuous "Live-Tweeting the Revolution" on Atlantic.c More...