FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Source Interlink Media's enthusiast sports group, GrindMedia, bought Dirt Sports and Off-Road Industry magazines from Ryan Communications Group this week.

The deal sets up a new Dirt Sports group within Grind for Source, which also includes existing titles Dirt Rider, ATV Rider, Endurocross and Motocross.com. Ryan Communications founder Jim Ryan will head up the new group.

The deal is the second one for GrindMedia, which bought Baseball America last December.

The GrindMedia group is Source's gen-y, yo More...

Four days in and I really do like Quartz. I like the catchy categories like “Energy Shocks,” and “Low Interest Rates,” and “Modern States.” I like the simple and clean look. And I like the ease of navigation on my iPad and my iPhone5 (just had to throw that in—kinda like a middle school student who inserts, n’est pa? at the end of sentences, because, well, n’est pas?).

It has its quirks and bugs to work out (some bylines show up with name and “Today at Invalid Date”). It runs a tad slow compared with other sites on my devices (today). But they are smart people and wil More...

The first issue of M magazine, the luxury men’s magazine last seen in 1992 and being revived by Fairchild Fashion Media, came out on Monday with a very distinctive and unusual cover. It’s not the cover subject, Bradley Cooper (People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive of 2011), but the design, format, and photographic style that makes M very different from the usual newsstand fare.

According to M creative director Nancy Butkus, the cover design was influenced both by European men’s magazines like Port and More...

More people interact with business newspaper The Financial Times through social media than directly with the brand, according to a recent infographic released by the publication.

In late July, The Financial Times’ digital subscribers grew to about 300,000 paying readers, an increase of about 31 percent when compared to the same time in 2011, with the publication’s total circulation increasing to almost 600,000.

Meanwhile, the FT social community reaches 3.9 million people—2.2 million on Twitter, 1.3 million on Google+, 430,000 on Facebook and a surprising 18,000 on LinkedIn. To put this into perspective, there are More...

Not so long ago, magazine and newspaper editors knew exactly what they were looking for when hiring young journalists. Certain jobs called for certain skills: Reporters had to report, researchers had to research, designers had to design.
 
These days, things are more complicated. Most of the new jobs in journalism are on the digital side, where a broader and somewhat different set of skills is required than we print hires possessed a generation or two ago. What editors need now is a new breed of journalist.
 
Over the last few years at The Atlantic, I’ve played a part in hiring several dozen young digital journalists—into new jobs, thanks to our web expansion, or into open slots created by departin More...

If this were a bad teen movie, the magazine publishing industry would not be (surprisingly) playing the glamorous cheerleader, but Apple would still be the big man on campus.

It seems that the industry has a case of unrequited love with Apple, at least according to recent findings from research firm MagazineRadar.

Apple hasn’t advertised the iPad in an MPA member magazine since July 2011. Last summer, Apple made a brief appearance within the industry’s pages, with the latest iPad campaign in magazines appearing from May-July 2011. During that time there were 21 ad pages placed strategically among 21 MPA monthly magazines, all with the same creative.

Apple did also place 18 back page cover ads in 9 More...

Fast Company’s annual design issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first cover that legendary art director George Lois created for Esquire magazine. This photograph, by noted photographer Platon, is available only in the iPad app version of Fast Company’s October 2012 issue, which is out today, September 12.

On the October 1962 cover of Esquire (which Lois is holding), he accurately predicted that boxer Sonny Liston would defeat Floyd Patterson in their upcoming heavyweight championship fight. That opinion at the time was decidedly in the More...

FOLIO: unveiled a one-day, nuts-and-bolts training workshop this week focused on presenting essential new skills for content creation and deployment. The workshop will be conducted three times in 2012—in Los Angeles (October 10), New York (November 14) and San Francisco (December 4).

Called C2, the workshop is built on more than 70 case studies and best practices from around the media industry. FOLIO: general manager Tony Silber and editor Bill Mickey will host the event.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to be in media,” Silber said. “There are new channels, new formats, More...

Hearst Magazine’s resident PR guru, Jessica Kleiman, hit the nail on the head when prepping newly appointed Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Joanna Coles for an upcoming interview (see video below), asking the question on the minds of several media reporters:

“Given the direction you took Marie Claire, do you have plans to make Cosmo more sophisticated?”

This could be a seminal moment for Hearst Magazines, Cosmopolitan and Coles herself. The title has been slammed recently by Victoria Hearst, the granddaughter of Hearst Corp. founder William Randolph Hea More...

A new report conducted by app store analytics firm Distimo finds that the United States is the most "socially savvy" country by virtue of its download volume of social apps.

According to Distimo, out of the most popular apps downloaded, 20 percent of the volume is apps from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like. In countries in Europe and South East Asia, social app download volume doesn't exceed 10 percent.

These findings are part of a larger look at how social media app downloads compare to other apps. As an example, the report finds that while download volume among the 100 most popular apps in Apple's App Store increased 43 percent over the last t More...

Some of us "older" publishing pros often quip it's the "digitally-savvy youngsters" that are driving the new publishing era—not just as consumers, but as talented members of the magazine publishing community.

In that spirit, it's time once again to turn the FOLIO: spotlight on the younger set and profile the next group of rising stars and innovators across traditional publishing roles, never-before-seen positions in new lines of business, and market-shaping start-ups: FOLIO:'s 15 Under 30.

Last year's list featured a cross-section of talent responsible f More...

Why has mobile yet to, well, mobilize? There are a number of reasons—a few of my favorites are:

• Economic Downturn: As mobile was ramping up, the economy slowed down. Advertising budgets, particularly test budgets for new media, became difficult to acquire.

• Growth of Social Media: The development of Facebook and Twitter stole some of the spotlight. Coupled with the tight economy, advertisers sought lower-cost ‘social media,’ perceived to be viral and free in nature. Ironically, mobile has been silently driving much of the traffic behind social media, which was confirmed when Facebook released mobile figures in advance of their IPO.

• Lack of Consumer Data: More...