FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

This fall, the MPA, the trade organization that once was the Magazine Publishers of America, took an early jumpstart on the surefire newsstand trope by changing its focus and logo, dropping “magazine” from its name, pushing it to its tagline, and essentially stating that the M, the P and the A no longer mean anything.

Short of using a symbol akin to that of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, I don’t think the MPA could have devised a better update. The insiders-only acronym, followed by the vaguely inclusive tagline, perfectly reflects the state of the industry the association represents.

Yes, it has gotten that head-spinning out there. W More...

News that management consultants were descending upon Condé Nast’s offices kicked up an entertaining mix of blog and comment paranoia and schadenfreude, mostly having to do with perks—perceived or actual—and with headcounts.

Of course, circulators jumped on the opportunity to rekindle with one of their favorite bogeymen: The specter of outsourcing.

Between audience development colleagues, debates on the topic typically revolve around whether it is wise for a publishing company to pursue that route. I don’t have a particularly strong opinion on the question—mostly because I think the best answer is a great cop-out: It depends.

What ought to be of greater interest, however, is getting ahead of ho More...

The moment I heard of the flare-up between newsstand distributors, wholesalers and publishers, whereby one party demanded higher fees or else, another stumped for status quo or else, and the other just made a lot of noise, I was reminded of Reservoir Dogs, the gory Tarantino crime caper famous for, among other scenes, its “Mexican standoff” ending.

That’s the classic spaghetti western situation in which each character has a gun pointed at another character’s head, forming a literal deadlock and ensuring that, should anyone pull the trigger, all die.