FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Leave it to Wired to ruin Christmas.

In the December issue the editors call out Santa Claus in a three-page infographic. They spoke with business process consultants, surveillance experts, shipping professionals and even a former Navy SEAL to find out how the jolly man from the North Pole would really operate, without invoking supernatural powers.

Some of the unofficial findings:

• Santa's elves have names like Mattel and Hasbro. Santa apparently sources production to a number of companies to mask the scope of his operation.
  
• Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice. He taps into More...

Don Imus returned to the airwaves this week—the first time since being dismissed in April over racially-charged on-air comments he made about the Rutgers woman's basketball team—with a pair of female comedians, both African American. Essence magazine news editor Tatsha Robertson scored a bit of a coup with one of them, 33-year-old Karith Foster, and posted the Q+A on the Essence Web site. In it, Foster responds to claims that she "sold out" by joining him on the air.

Kudos to Essence for staying on top More...

The big news out of Condé Nast this week wasn't about a controversial news story or some major acquisition. No, the buzz was about chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr.'s annual luncheon bash exclusively for his top editors, publishers and executives. And, if the New York Post's Keith Kelly is to be believed, everyone wanted to know who was sitting where and with whom-most especially who had the coveted seat next to Mr. Newhouse himself.

I'm always a fan of a good party, but does anyone who didn't attend really care? Does i More...

There's nothing like a practically naked woman to grab a man's attention. That said, it struck as somewhat odd when we noticed this photo as part of the annual gift guide featured in the December issue of Men's Health, on newsstands Tuesday.

The editors used a number of photos from a shoot with Dania Ramirez-a star on the hit NBC television show "Heroes"-throughout the gift guide package. The best way, apparently, to display Fender's new VG Stratocaster guitar was to have Ramirez strip off her clothes and wear it.

"We love women and, of course, we're goi More...

When Steve Madden, of Rodale's Cycling Group, asked the question, "Why don't more people think bicycling is great," he and his team did a little brainstorming and came up with the BikeTown project. Rodale handed out 50 bicycles free to residents of Portland, Maine for three months and told them to, well, ride them.

What were the results? Not surprisingly the participants lost weight-a combined 750 pounds to be exact. The BikeTown project has expanded over 48 states, handing out 3,000 bikes to about 15,000 riders. So far, the project has generated 154 million media impressions, Madden said, and More...

As we were sifting through the stacks of magazines we have collected here at Folio:, we came across the October and November issues of Shape. Placing them side-by-side we couldn't help but notice how strangely similar the covers are.

Both bathing suit-clad subjects (singer Sheryl Crow, October; actor Heather Graham, November) appear standing in water with the sun setting behind them. The color schemes are nearly the same. The cover lines look similar. The list goes on.

A Shape spokesperson says Crow and Graham were photographed in different locations, although at practically the same ti More...

Despite a driving rain, nearly 500 people made it to mid-town Manhattan's Guastavino's Thursday night for BusinessWeek's "What's Next?" party, celebrating the magazine's first redesign in four years. The magazine's new, sharper look debuted in the October 22 issue which hit newsstands today.

The evening began quietly with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, and those who attended brushed elbows with the likes of Nixon-era secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch and CosmoGIRL! founding editor Atoosa Rubenstein.

Vaulted company aside, the festivities got under way a littl More...

Spin magazine founder Robert Guccione, Jr. on stepping down from his post as Discover Media CEO and assuming instead the role of chairman: "I'm an entrepreneur, and sometimes we don't always move up, or down, or sideways-we just move."

In a phone conversation with Folio:, Guccione dismissed what he called "rumors" that his stepping down as CEO was initiated by a philosophical fall-out between him and his investors. "There has been gossip, and it all has been exaggerated," he says. " More...

When the news broke late last week that Cygnus Business Media had announced to employees through an internal memo that their salaries will be cut by 7.5 percent, and that hourly workers will be put on a 37-hour workweek at least through the end of the year, one of our first thoughts was what the early- to mid-career staffers there would do: Grin and bear it, or quit?

It remains to be seen how things at Cygnus will shake out. In the meantime, we informally polled a small handful of assistant/associate-level magazine types throughout the industry to see how they'd react i More...

As we scoured the Internet this week for news about the unfortunate shuttering of Time Inc.'s Business 2.0, we came across a blog post recalling the similar demise of tech mag the Industry Standard six years ago.

In the post, Eric Savitz-a former Standard writer-indicates that the magazine for a time attempted to maintain an online presence after the print version died and points readers to the thestandard.com. All that's there is a dark grey logo on a black screen, and the words: "coming back..." (It's almost like when you go to your favorite restaurant for More...