FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Layoffs. Reorganizations. Redesigns. New hires. Companies going on the block.

Even during the dog days of summer, there's still plenty of big magazine industry news to populate the home page at FOLIOmag.com. And, our readers haven't only been reading the stories—they've been commenting on them, too.

Here's a quick sampling of the more interesting (and unedited) comments we've received in the last few weeks, and the debates they have sparked.


From: How Do Print-Company Professionals Consume More...

As first reported by FOLIO: this week, financial publisher Source Media is reorganizing its more than 60 magazines into four business groups—banking, capital markets, technology and professional services—and is recasting editorial staffs for each of its individual brands and rolling editors into combined units for each of the four new groups, "pooling" editorial by market.

In an 1,830-word memo announcing the reorganization to staffers, CEO Jim Malkin provided a detailed account of the hurdles plaguing the financial services and information publishing industries, and the debt market:

To All SourceMedia and Accuity people:

I'd like to tak More...

RELATED: Consumer Magazines Take Huge Hit at Newsstand

With the economy down and gas prices skyrocketing, its no wonder that automotive and technology magazines saw some of the industry's biggest circulation declines over the first half, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations consumer magazine FAS-FAX report out today.

Of all consumer magazines, some of the biggest decliners, in terms of total paid and verified circ, included Stock Car Racing (-27.3 percent), Car Audio and Electronics (-24.2 percent), Lowrider (-22.3 percent More...

“Democrats embrace their child molesters.”

“Top 10 Democratic sex scandals in Congress.”

“Democrats wage war on God.”

Not the kind of headlines you'd expect from an association magazine.

But in fact they are, according to a report in Florida’s Gainesville Sun newspaper, from the Black Republican, the magazine of the National Black Republican Association.

After scrolling through the associati More...

Since the report last week about Esquire's flashy e-paper October anniversary cover—and our follow-up on the technology behind it—I've been hearing/reading a lot of negative opinions about it.

One Web site called it obnoxious. Rex Hammock said it was "the worst use of tech More...

Alright, try to follow this insanity.

Cook County magazine, what was supposed to be a new title commissioned by Cook County, Illinois board president Todd Stroger, has been shelved due—of all things—to misspellings and grammatical errors.

According to a report in Chicago’s Sun-Times, Stroger hired an editor to develop and publish a magazine in a “non-threatening news environment that ensures regular, positive press—to counter-balance negative press often found in the mainstream media.” Today, though, 5,000 copies of the 32-page glossy are stacked in Stroger’s office with no place to go. The cover story of the launch issue is an More...

Some days I’m just happy that I’m a journalist working in the U.S.

As I was trolling the Internet this morning, as I do every morning, I came across this Reuters report about prosecutors raiding the offices of a French auto magazine, Auto Plus, which allegedly published unauthorized pictures of a yet-to-be-unveiled new car. In the raid, authorities confiscated computers and documents containing names and contacts of sources, and arrested one staffer.

While this particular story reminds me of the sometimes disturbing practices of celebrity-hounding paparazzi (apparently French auto publishers regularly pay for unauthor More...

Last week, the Publishers Information Bureau released first half figures, with consumer magazine advertising pages continuing to decline, slipping 7.4 percent over the first half and 8.2 percent for the quarter.

In our spare time (because we have so much), we grouped a number of the magazines into topical categories to see how ad pages (the more telling statistic) fared in business magazines, newsweeklies and celebrity titles during the first half. Overall, not so well.

But it wasn’t all grim news. In the business sector, Condé Nast’s Portfolio p More...

Score one for magazine editors standing up for gender equality, even with a bottle of spray paint in-hand.

Cynthia Good, founding editor of Atlanta-based women’s business magazine Pink, has reportedly convinced city transportation officials there to discontinue using “Men at Work” and “Men Working Ahead” road work signs and replace them with more gender-neutral signs that read “Workers Ahead.”

The changes come after police apparently visited Good’s office last month on a complaint that she spray painted the letters “wo” onto a “Men at Work” sign. Whether or not she was the culprit is unclear, but Good began More...

The latest gossip surrounding the apparent impending sale of Cygnus Business Media is that Penton Media (probably backed by parent Wasserstein & Co.) is the buyer. Today might be the final day of the due diligence process, according to three sources, all of whom are former Cygnus employees who heard the rumblings second hand.

When asked for comment, a Penton spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to FOLIO: that Penton has “nothing to say at this point.”

DeSilva + Phillips managing partner Reed Phillips—who along with fellow managing partner Roland DeSilva spoke with Cygnus co-CEO Carr Davis in a closed-door meeting last month—said he could not confirm the rumors.

Rumors have been swirling about the potential sale of Cygnus Business Media since co-CEOs Tony O’Brien and Carr Davis [pictured], in an interview with FOLIO: last month, indicated that the company is exploring a sale.

According to three sources contacted by FOLIO:, the Cygnus corporate management team was in New York for about a week recently, most likely meeting with prospective buyers. Now, sources say a buyer has stepped up and that (as early as today) Cygnus is moving toward the due diligence phase of negotiations.

Is the buyer from private equity or another publisher? So far, I ha More...

UPDATE: It appears the magazine got the cash it needed.

Arthur magazine is almost dead.

When logging onto the self-proclaimed “transgenerational global counterculture” music magazine’s Web site today I was redirected to a page asking for a monetary donation. Arthur, according to the page, “will die” if it doesn’t raise $20,000 by July 1.

In a note posted online, Arthur editor/owner Jay Babcock indicated that after buying out his ex-partner and More...