FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

There’s no doubt running a magazine business is a difficult task these days. Publishing magazines that serve the housing market even more so.

One of those publishers, Greg Morey, CEO and publisher of GR Wyse Publications, apparently has had enough. In an e-mail Wednesday, Morey wrote that he is shutting down the company and shuttering the magazine it publishes, Florida Designers Review.

“I am tired of trying to scrape a product together and fighting a vertical battle at my own personal expense,” Morey wrote.

Yikes. Morey’s entire, painful, e-mail:

From: Greg Morey
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:56 PM
To: Greg Morey
Subject: Farewell for now.

Hi,

Unlike the Paper ind More...

Last year was truly a brutal year for consumer magazines. Advertising pages dropped 11.7 percent in 2008 when compared to 2007, according to year-end figures released by the Publishers Information Bureau Tuesday. Of the more than 230 magazines tracked by PIB (and still being published) only 42—or about 18 percent—saw ad pages increase for the year.

It’s the biggest dropoff since 2000, the earliest year comparative PIB numbers are available.

In fact, each of the top 12 advertising categories declined in 2008, and the falloffs were seen in both PIB rev More...

Its not every day that a newspaper writes a letter to the editor.

In response to “End Times,” an article by Michael Hirschorn published in the Atlantic that speculates on whether the venerable New York Times can survive these trying times, Catherine Mathis , NYT’s senior vice president of corporate communications, wrote a letter to the Atlantic calling the story “poor analysis,” saying the writing “leaves a lot to be desired from the standpoint of . . . well, journalism.”

Ouch!

Here’s the entire letter, More...

Last summer’s cash infusion from readers apparently wasn’t enough to save ailing Arthur magazine from going out of business.

On its Web site, editor/publisher Jay Babcock today wrote in a memo that he is “hibernating” the print edition until a publishing partner steps forward to help run/finance the magazine. “I am done with self-publishing Arthur, which I’ve been doing since July 2007,” he wrote. “It’s too much work for one person to edit, publish and manage a national magazine, month after month, year after year. More...

It has come to this.

Double Jump Publishing, the owners of national video game enthusiast magazine Hardcore Gamer, have put the magazine on the block—on eBay. The starting bid? A mere $42,000.

“You will be buying the copyrights, registered trademark rights, intellectual property rights, back issues, subscription lists, customer lists, vendor lists, employee contracts, distribution contacts, public relations contacts, advertising contacts, web sites and domain names associated with Hardcore Gamer, including More...

Ziff Davis Media announced late yesterday the shuttering of Electronic Gaming Monthly and sale of its 1UP Digital Network to Hearst.

Here's CEO Jason Young’s memo:

From: Young, Jason
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 6:31 PM
To: Media All
Subject: 1UP News

Team:

We are announcing today the sale of our 1UP digital business to UGO Entertainment, a dvision of Hearst Corporation.  
 
Over the course of the last 4 years we have built the 1UP sites into a top tier gaming dig More...

SEE ALSO: Ziff CEO's Memo

Tuesday marked a monumental if somewhat sad day for Ziff Davis Media. The venerable tech publisher announced the sale of its collection of gaming sites under the 1UP Digital Network umbrella to Hearst’s Ugo Entertainment and shuttered the print version of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

It’s worth noting that with More...

TechCrunch founder and superblogger Michael Arrington is fed up with PR agencies and their embargoed press releases—so much so that he says TechCrunch will break every embargo it agrees to honor.

“Gone are the days of polite pitches and actual relationship building,” Arrington [pictured] wrote in a recent post.  “Today, PR firms email a story to us as many as 20 times, and call every TechCrunch writer on their cell phones repeatedly.”

Beyond the PR barrage, Arrington says the problem is that agencies will send an embargoed release to multiple More...

BIA Digital Partners Wednesday announced it had acquired the assets of Richmond, Virginia-based newsletter and trade magazine publisher Douglas Publications and is changing its name to Briefings Media Group.

I spoke to several knowledgeable M&A sources today who said the acquisition was not a “normal” sale but that BIA—a private investment firm that first invested in Douglas in 2005 as part of Douglas’ estimated $15 million acquisition of the Briefings Publishing Group from Wicks Business Information—took control of Douglas.

“I don’t know if BIA even gave them a dollar for the business, but they took the keys,” one M&A executive s More...

SEE ALSO: 117 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2009

As the long, hard slog that was 2008 draws to a close, the magazine industry—however wearily—is looking ahead to 2009.

Today, we posted 117 predictions (and counting) for the coming year. In its year-end holiday e-mail, the team at the Jordan, Edmiston Group—which completed 17 deals in 2008—had its own insights for 2009.

Here’s an excerpt:

Looking ahead, we’re hopeful that M&A activity will begin to pick up toward the end of Q1 2009, as the cred More...

After pulling RBI off the block this week, London-based publisher Reed Elsevier received more bad news from an investor’s ratings service.

Moody’s Thursday lowered its outlook for Reed from “stable” to “negative.” In its statement, Moody’s said it was concerned that without proceeds from a sale of RBI, the company might need to increase the amount of debt it will need to raise to refinance loans associated with its February acquisition of data provider ChoicePoint.

As of last month, Reed was expected More...

Here’s something you don’t hear much anymore.

Penton Media’s John Teresko, a senior technology editor at IndustryWeek, Monday celebrated 50 years with the company—and with the magazine. That’s 50 years—as in five decades.

“What made it a sustainable journey is that the quality of my associates kept increasing,” Teresko told me yesterday.  “They made it a rewarding and enjoyable journey.”

Teresko started at the magazine when it was still called Steel, The Metalworking Management Weekly. The magazine changed its name to IndustryWeek in 1970.

Staying with one business, let alone one product for 50 years is a More...