FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Are magazines facing Total Recall, or Judgment Day? Photo: Doug Goodman

Interesting poll question via Ad Age:

Even before the economic downturn, the magazine sector seemed to be struggling not only with ad pages and subscription bases, but with figuring out its approach to the new digital world as well. Obviously, titles have made progress in that regard — 10% of revenue for those on our Magazine 300 comes from digital. But have magazines moved far enough fast enough?

THIS WEEK'S POLL QUESTION: Have magazines moved quickly enough into the digital era?

That’s the first time I’ve seen an industry- More...

The magazine industry is no stranger to Photoshop controversies, but this is a first.

During a discussion about Newsweek’s Sarah Palin cover on—what else?—Fox News, Andrea More...

We went and did it.

After years of watching publishers from all corners of the magazine industry roll out “green” issues, FOLIO: finally caved.

I'll admit that I pushed hard for the 1973 National Lampoon-baiting cover, but in the end our editor went with the “newsstand friendly” version. (FOLIO:, of course, is on, like, two newsstands or something, but it’s also hard to win any ar More...

A couple weeks ago, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham appeared on Fox News’ Factor and took a tongue-lashing from host Bill O’Reilly, one that turned oddly personal.

O’Reilly’s beef? That Newsweek, under Meacham’s watch, has gone from a liberal-leaning magazine to something of a mouthpiece for liberal blog Daily Kos (which O’Reilly referred to as a "hate site") and its founder, Markos Moulitsas, whom Meacham hired as a contributing columnist. Which, I thought, is a bit abs More...

Perhaps it’s because his death hit closer to home than other celebrities (I live in Westport, Connecticut, just a few short apple tosses from his farmhouse, and worked at the local playhouse the summer he starred in “Our Town”). Perhaps it’s because his philanthropic food company has raised more than $250 million for charities. Perhaps it's because he was simply a good guy.

But People’s announcement that they are putting together a 96-page book about Paul Newman, More...

With the U.S. financial crisis dominating the headlines, the media struggled early on to put a face on the collapse. Having clearly settled on U.S. Treasury Chief Henry Paulson as the hero/villain, the Economist and the Week went the Uncle Sam route. (It’s not the first time these two have published similar cover concepts.)

Fortune, though, went with the frighteningly close headshot for its cover profile—almost, quite frankly, as scary as Wired’s 2005 Al Gore cover.

Steely!

In this election cycle, a month can feel like a year. Which is why it was either a brilliant or bone-headed move by Entertainment Weekly to recreate the New Yorker’s now-infamous “Fist-Bump” cover—featuring depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as gun-toting, bin Laden-loving, fist-bumping radicals published back in July—with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert playing the respective roles of the Democratic hopeful and his wife—fake afro and all.

The issue hits newsstands tomorrow.

More...

CHICAGO—“They literally had meetings for days and days about how much red they could use on the Web site.”

That’s how Jason Brightman, design director at PC World, described the magazine’s color fixation during a design session here at the FOLIO: Show. “Red’s great, but you’ll go blind trying to read text that way.”

He said he made a small but important change on the site: Shifted the text to blue. “It had the added bonus of the color people recognize as link,” Brightman said, adding that it’s more important to be readable than follow any More...

CHICAGO—During his keynote address during the 2008 FOLIO: Show here, Time magazine president and worldwide publisher Ed McCarrick said he’s been fending off the “death of the news magazine” thing since the early seventies.

“Pundits heralding the death of news magazines since I was on my way in the door [in 1973],” he said. “They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.”

But he also appears to be keenly aware of the importance of the Web.

Despite the magazine’s Web site (relaunched again a couple weeks ago) accounting for just 11 percent of Time’s revenue, it’s growing—75 percent this More...

CHICAGO—In a somewhat  evangelical  speech that was not entirely unlike Tom Cruise's in Magnolia here, Jim Louderback—the former editor-in-chief of PC Magazine and current CEO of Revision3, an online video company backed by the dudes from Digg—lamented the slashing of editorial budgets in the magazine industry. Specifically, the disappearance of a position that is sounding more and more antiquated: the “fact checker.”

“In the 90s, it seemed like we had hundreds,” he said. “Now, guess how ma More...

CHICAGO—At this point, it’s probably easier to list the magazines Luke Hayman hasn’t had a hand in designing. Hayman, the longtime New York magazine designer and dude responsible for Time magazine’s redesign among countless others (Radar, Consumer Reports, etc.), outlined a laundry list of design trends to avoid, at a session at the 2008 FOLIO: magazine here.

And while praising Esquire’s ridiculously overhyped electronic cover, ("It's truly amazing, you can stare at it on your desk for hours") and co More...

The Atlantic photographer who posted spooky manipulated photos of her shoot with Republican presidential nominee John McCain on her own Web site has drawn the ire of the Atlantic and McCain camps, but—perhaps not surprisingly—a mixed reaction from the design and photo community.

Here’s a quick summary for those who haven’t been following this made-for-election-year media saga. Jill Greenberg—the photographer and noted monkey retoucher who has done cover work for Time, Fast Company, New York, Wired and Portfolio and a slew of other titles—was hired by the Atlantic to s More...