FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

"If they just get the magazine, they're not as useful."
—Kelsey Voss, director, circulation and customer development, Ziff Davis Enterprise

"As we present our audience with a variety of products, the problem that we face is that not all of our customers want to receive every product we offer, and they don't necessarily have to subscribe to our print publication to be a member of our audience."
—Heidi Spangler, director of circulation and audience development, Questex Media

"Circulation-based metrics are irrelevant to proving magazine effectiveness. There is More...

CHICAGO—Maybe it's our compulsion to solve the chicken-or-the-egg riddle, or perhaps just stab a stake in the ground, but at the 2008 CM Show here this week, there was quite a bit of effort to establish just what exactly is "king."

Don Pazour, CEO of b-to-b publisher Access Intelligence, proclaimed in his opening keynote "audience is king," essentially relegating content and commerce as servants to the ultimate goal-attracting a high-quality audience. Growing audience, said Pazour, means you're growing the company, and "if More...

Last week, the BPA, ABC and a number of advertising and magazine associations launched a campaign targeting client-side marketers who buy non-audited b-to-b publications. Called Buy Safe Media, the program uses direct marketing to drive buyers to a cartoonish Web site which features a video and information on the potential pitfalls of un-audited media—a calculated attempt to shut non-audited titles out of the buying process, or, at least, indirectly convince them to become audited.

The campaign invoked the wrath of Bob Sacks, a prolific column More...

The way things are going, Susan Lyne will need to formally address her near-term plans for employment sooner than she might have planned—perhaps even before she's polished off next week's lavender almond torte with Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore.

The departing CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has been at the crest of a swelling wave of speculation (one which FOLIO: started back in November)—and it just may break on top of a lunch she has More...

DeveloperShed, Ziff Davis Enterprise’s 12-site tech network of developer communities, has joined Federated Media, a blog aggregator and service provider that brings independent publishers into its network by offering to take on their ad sales.

The five-year-old DeveloperShed will become part of FM’s Technology federation—one of about 10 other verticals that include sports, automotive, media and entertainment, and video gaming. DeveloperShed merged with ZDE in August 2007 as the tech publisher completed its spin-out from Ziff Davis.

Twelve sites strong, one More...

Much like Bobby McFerrin's chirpy ode to blissful ignorance, ABM recently attempted to put a happy spin on its analysis of its own BIN report.

Essentially, both print ad revenue and pages ended 2007 down—not by a lot, 2 percent for revenue and 3.35 percent for pages, but down. And this after a flat 2006 in revenue and a slight decline in pages.

Now these kinds of things can be looked at from any number of angles. And no one, especially an association representing an entire industry, wants to be the bearer of bad news, much less voluntarily even touch a doomy outlook. For More...

When you're a $5 billion publisher like Time Inc., you can afford to hire someone like David Refkin as director of sustainable development. Indeed, the company has been studying the impact of its entire production process. At the MPA's 2008 Retail Conference in Tampa, Florida today, Refkin discussed Time Inc.'s efforts in environmental sustainability, offering up figures that give some insight into the company's impact:

• The company buys 500,000 tons of paper each year from 53 mills.
• 75 percent of the company's fiber meets certified sustainable forestry (CSF) stand More...

MIAMI—During his morning keynote, Meredith Publishing Group president Jack Griffin explained the company's approach to selling via its M360º group. "It's a group set up to be media neutral. We're not selling a particular asset, but creating solutions for our advertising customers."

It's an approach that focuses entirely on selling integrated packages, no longer simply selling customers on a single media—print display advertising, for example. It's also one that other publishers are adopting. CMP has realigned its marketing services team to be customer-facing by region, creating customized packa More...

Earlier this week, Eric Lundberg, Penton's CFO of a year, announced that he was returning to ALM. On Tuesday, Penton head John French passed along this note:

-----Original Message-----
From: French, John
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:07 AM
To: DL-Penton Global; DL-Prism Global
Subject: Eric Lundberg's Departure
Importance: High

Hello Everyone,

Today, I am announcing that Eric Lundberg, Chief Financial Officer, has decided to leave the company. Eric will be returning to ALM as Chief Financial Officer and senior vice president.

Eric joined Penton a little more than a year ago and his contributions have been significa More...

This post by FOLIO: editor Dylan Stableford on Glam Media and its CEO Samir Arora makes two insights into e-media M&A:

"If traditional publishers continue to miss the site network strategy, as Arora says, I'd expect that line of ‘approachers' to start looking like the runway at JFK, probably sooner than later. And when it does, it'll be a fun exercise in valuation."

Arora says he's already getting a significant amount of interest from tire-kickers and the supposition that the crowd of curious buyers will soon resemble a packed runway is dead on. Media bankers DeSilva + Phillips have already labeled 2007 as the "More...

Smart Money picked up a Dow Jones story reporting that Michael Copps, a Democrat and member of the Federal Communications Commission, is voicing a growing concern over the big private equity deals—particularly in media. Seems he's a bit skittish over the volume and size of these deals over the last year, especially in light of the subprime fallout and a grim economic outlook for the coming year.

"There's been a whole raft (of acquisitions) involving private equity in recent years and I think we need to ask questions about them," said Copps, w More...

Hachette Filipacchi Media's announcement this morning of its appointment of Todd Anderman as SVP, digital media seems to have elicited a number of queries into where the company's previous head of digital, Marta Wohrle, ended up. Wohrle joined the company a couple years ago to build out the digital media group, first as a consultant, then fulltime. She made our FOLIO: 40 last year for essentially creating Hachette's e-media business from scratch.

Turns out Wohrle has been busy developing her own sites, and plans to do some investing herself. Here, via Hachette spokeswoman Anne Janas, is what Worhle passed a More...