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Not even Bob Dylan could have predicted the amount of upheaval among consumer magazine publishing companies this summer. Seriously, either chief executives and/or the top staffers in charge of media divisions at all the major companies have been in constant flux.

The most recent and perhaps final example came Tuesday when Paris-based Lagardere Active announced that Alain Lemarchand, who has served as CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. since June 2008, will be stepping down and that former Primedia Enthusiast Media and Source Interli More...

When London-based United Business Media announced late last week that it had acquired Canon Communications, one of the initial questions that came to mind was whether the $287 million price tag—while significantly larger than any other deal in b-to-b publishing since before the economic downturn—was in fact enough for owner Apprise Media and private equity investor Spectrum Equity Investors to turn a profit.

Backed by Spectrum, Apprise acquired Canon from fellow media industry private equity f More...

What would you do if you saw a truck driving down the road with your magazine’s logo slapped on the side of it? Maybe think your publishing company is trying its hand at distribution and you didn’t know about it?

In the case of Dallas, Texas-based D magazine, its owners are taking legal action.

D founder Wick Allison, who in turn owns D Magazine Partners LP, is suing Allen, Texas-based moving company D Moving for trademark infringement. The magazine claims the company’s logo—a white ‘D’ in a red box—is confusingly similar to its own and is being used without permission.

And More...

Ah, how so much has changed in such a short span of years. And yet, Wired’s Chris Anderson is apparently obsessed with the “death” of publishing mediums.

For those of you who haven’t seen or heard about it yet, the cover story of the Condé Nast tech title’s September issue is called “The Web is Dead.” It’s a two part story with the “What Happened” portion written by Anderson and the “And Why” portion penned by new contributing editor Michael Wolff. Ironically, the story generated a huge amount of buzz last week when the story was posted—yes—to th More...

A growing number of magazines over the last several months have tapped into augmented reality with the goal of expanding the traditional print content experience with Web-based video or other electronic delivery.

Last summer, Bonnier’s Popular Science unveiled an interactive cover that allowed readers to log onto the Web site, hold up the cover to a webcam and interact with a 3-D image of wind turbines. For its December 2009 issue, Esquire featured 2-D barcodes on the cover and elsewhere inside the ma More...

Not long after media and information private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson released its annual communications industry forecast, I spoke with partner Hal Greenberg about the firm’s projections for consumer and trade magazines through 2014. In regard to consumer publishing, Greenberg said all eyes will be on how the flood of e-readers to the market will continue to affect business moving forward.

“What will be interesting is what impact the iPads and Kindles of the world will have on consumer magazines,” Greenberg said. “Right now, the subscription models aren’t particularly good. But, that will ultimately change. We think they w More...

A lot of changes are happening at ESPN the Magazine. As it announced earlier this summer, the magazine is moving much of its operations from Manhattan to the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. What’s more, the magazine is shifting to a single sport or theme per issue.

From a publishing perspective, I think it could be a great idea. The magazine will be able to plan content further in advance which potentially could allow the sales staff to start selling ads early, and perhaps also target advertisers that are relevant to the theme but have never bought any space in the magazine before.

Through the first six mont More...

When The Washington Post Co. announced in May that it was putting Newsweek on the block the story obviously stirred up a lot of attention all around the world. The following day, I wrote a post here speculating who might wind up buying the ailing magazine. In response to that, I received an e-mail from a man named Abdulsalam Haykal, a technology entrepreneur who serves as CEO of a Syria-based company called Haykal Media. In the e-mail, Haykal talked about the growing potential of media in the Middle East and said he was More...

A month after final bids were due, the Washington Post Co. announced Monday that 91-year-old Sidney Harman, the founder and chairman emeritus of Harman International, has acquired Newsweek magazine.

“Newsweek is a national treasure,” Harman says in the announcement. “I am enormously pleased to be succeeding The Washington Post Company and the Graham family and look forward to this great journalistic, business and technological challenge.”

But Harman isn’t the only player who sounded off about the deal. I reached out to fellow bidder Fred Drasner (a former partner of Mort Zuckerman who helped negotiate his deals fo More...

Bids to acquire ailing Newsweek magazine were due at 5 p.m. on July 1. A month later, parent company the Washington Post Co. is still mum on the process and on who might wind up taking the magazine home.

Recent scuttlebutt, however, points to a couple interesting developments. The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Washington Post Co. isn’t interested in selling to bidder Avenue Capital Group over concerns with the hedge fund’s proposal to partner with National Enquirer publisher More...

Controversial. Insightful. Entertaining. True.

One of the best parts of covering magazine publishing and interviewing the industry’s most influential players is getting that nugget, that one quote about some important issue that stands out—leaps off the screen as any one or more of the descriptors above.

And, thankfully, there have been a lot of them. Now that we’re well past the halfway mark in 2010, I looked back at all our stories since the beginning of the year (or at least as many as I could) and collected several quotes that stood out most to me over the months. (Let me know if I missed any...)

Here's the list, in More...

UPDATE: Penthouse Owner Offers $210M for Playboy

Apparently Hugh Hefner’s announcement this week that he wants to take Playboy Enterprises private—and the media swarm that followed—has the Playboy founder on the defensive. If not about the offer itself or if it is substantially below the fair market value for the company, then definitely about other parties stepping forward to place their own bids.

Shortly after Hefner announced his proposal to purchase all of Playboy’s outstanding shares of Class A and Class B c More...