FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Kentucky Rep. Tim Couch (R-Hyden) has proposed a bill that would require people who contribute comments or other user-generated content to Web sites to register their real name, address and e-mail address with the host site. If passed, Web sites that violate the requirement would be fined $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense.

Apparently, Couch proposed the bill to call attention to what he says are unkind and often untrue comments about people being posted online by anonym More...

Last June, after Ziff Davis Media sold its Enterprise Group to private-equity firm Insight Venture Partners for $150 million, I couldn’t understand why the new company—called Ziff Davis Enterprise—took a name so similar to its former parent.

It’s confusing—and not only to me.

Yesterday, following Ziff Davis Media's announcement that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Ziff Davis Enterprise CEO Steve Weitzner posted a More...

FOLIO: reported today United Business Media's decision to split CMP Technology into four “integrated media companies” in order to “better align CMP’s products with its customers.” In addition, UBM named four CEOs for the respective companies, and dropped the name CMP altogether.

Some FOLIO: commenters have called the restructuring a “non-announcement,” claiming that nothing has really changed.

What do you think?

Here's the press release in its entirety:

United Business Media Transforms CMP into Four Independent Media and Information Services Businesses

News Release Issued: February 29, 2008 3:00 AM EST

United Business Media Tran More...

Nearly two months without a day-to-day CEO, CMP may be ready to announce a successor to Steve Weitzner, who was moved from CEO to chairman earlier this year and left the company for rival publisher Ziff Davis Enterprise shortly after. I have heard from multiple sources that the announcement could come before the end of the week.

Although no one’s talking, a logical choice candidate would be Tony Uphoff, CMP’s Business Technology Group president. Uphoff is a 20-plus-year industry veteran and is no rookie to the CMP brand. In the 1990s he served as BTG president and group publisher, and was publisher of InformationWeek. Last year, he rejoined CMP from Nielsen Business Media, where he was publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and More...

Former Time Out New York editor Brian Farnham has been tight-lipped about the Internet start-up company he left the magazine late last month to help launch. Today, though, I received this e-mail from Farnham via LinkedIn. His company is an online news information site called Polar News. And apparently, they’re hiring.

The new position—a production manager—is an interesting one. It seems to combine editorial, marketing and circulation responsibilities.

Interested? See the e-mail below.

From: [REDACTED]
On Behalf Of Brian Farnham
Sent: Monday, Febr More...

Here's an idea that has been kicked around ad nauseum (see: "Magabrands," Dave Zinczenko et al) but perhaps never expressed so bluntly. According to Computerworld and Infoworld editorial director Don Tenant, the print magazine no longer should be the “heart and soul” of a brand. Instead, as his team did at IDG, publishers should think of their brand as an online media company with ancillary print and event products.

“Advertising is shifting from print to online in droves. So, what do you do?” Tenant said this morning during a session at the FOLIO: Publishing Summit. “ More...

A quick e-mail exchange I had today with Reed Business Information’s vice president of corporate communications regarding a report in the England's Telegraph newspaper on 1,000 impending job cuts at the parent company:

From: Jason Fell [mailto:jfell@red7media.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:58 AM
To: [REDACTED]
Subject: FOLIO: Story
Importance: High
Good morning Salina. I hope you had a nice weekend.

I read this story this morning about Reed Elsevier planning to cut 1,000 jobs. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/17/cnreed117.xml)

I’m curious: How will this im More...

It’s that time of year again—for sports fans, the dark and gloomy vortex between the Super Bowl and March Madness. For Sports Illustrated, it’s Christmas: the swimsuit issue, the magazine’s annual predictably overhyped—and just as predictably, controversial—run through the media machinery.

In terms of advertising, marketing and newsstand sales, the swimsuit issue is the Super Bowl for Sports Illustrated. This year’s issue, with Marisa Miller on the cover, hit store shelves today, and—eschewing some level of corporate synergy—will get its official debut tonight on the David Letterman show. Why not, say, CN More...

As reeling Boston sports fans look for someone—anyone—to blame for the Patriots’ upset loss to the New York Giants in yesterday’s Super Bowl, Boston area Christian groups are pointing their fingers at Boston magazine over what they say is a controversial ad in the February issue.

The ad, for the Equinox Fitness Club, depicts a group of women dressed as nuns in habit sketching a buff naked man. The ad was designed, in part, by edgy advertising agency Fallon Worldwide as part of its “ More...

Here’s to taking customer satisfaction to the extreme.

Each year, the Men’s Journal advertising staff participates in what it calls the “Dare Your Rep” campaign, an initiative to help engage their clients and to promote the magazine’s May “Adventure” issue. So what awaited the magazine’s eager sales staff this year?

Firewalking? No. Winter surfing off Montauk? Nah. Taking more than 40 percent of clients’ votes was swimming with sharks. Of course.

So, last week, 15 advertising reps donned wetsuits, hopped into a tank at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, and got up-close-and personal with several varieties of sh More...

Who knew FOLIO:’s Web site would become a forum for debating abortion rights issues?

Since posting this story Monday ("Pro-Life Groups Outraged Over Vogue Photo Spread") about how a photoshoot for a Vogue column on partial-birth abortions has angered religious and pro-life groups—who say it makes the controversial procedure appear fashionable—thousands of people have stopped by to read it, and many have posted passionate comments rationalizing all sides of the issue.

Our story was even More...

This week, FOLIO: reported that Cygnus co-CEOs Carr Davis and Tony O'Brien plan to restore of some salaries that were slashed by 7.5 percent by means of a "bonus" to be paid mid-January. The bonus, they say, represents about 70 percent of the initial reduction absorbed by many employees in October. However, only salaried employees who do not receive commission, incentive payments or other bonuses will be eligible for this "restoration."

Based on the comments we've received since posting the story, there seems to be a discrepancy between the C More...