FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Here’s the internal announcement regarding the folding of three Vance Publishing décor titles. The market might be unique, but the words should sound familiar to publishers struggling to navigate the economic crisis.

Everyone:

As you all know, we are currently in a worldwide economic recession that is not expected to turn around until some time next year. Advertising has been particularly hard hit. While we have made great strides to develop digital and event business, our primary source of revenue is still print advertising. For the past several months, your management team has painstakingly reviewed each and every one of our expenses. On the production fron More...

On Wednesday afternoon, I was told by a publishing CEO that American Business Media’s Digital Velocity conference, scheduled for March 3-4 at McGraw-Hill’s Conference Center in New York, had been cancelled.

Thinking this was an important story—given the cancellation of the American Magazine Conference the week before—I shot an e-mail to ABM and called a couple of the event’s organizers. No response. Our publisher e-mailed three of the event’s scheduled speakers. Each wrote back saying the event was cancelled; two added they were told ABM was “working on a way to recreate the content as a series of Webinars.” Meanwhile, a couple of the event’s exhibitors said that they More...

The FOLIO: 40, our prestigious annual list of magazine industry innovators, power players and under-the-radar influencers, is fast approaching. Once again, we’re opening up the nomination process to all of our readers, both print and online.

We’re looking for nominees in the following categories:

C-Level Visionaries
Director-Level Doers
Industry-Influencers
Under the Radar

If you would like to nominate a colleague, competitor, or—as sometimes is the case—yourself, please fill out the form below.

Remember, nominations are one thing, but to ultimately be inclu More...

Elliott Wilson, the former editor of XXL, the Source and others, is prepping the launch of Rap Radar, a Web site he says he’d like to see become the Huffington Post of hip-hop, a platform artists and producers can use to sound off on music, politics and culture.

Wilson has a reputation for being outspoken. And given his reported tendency toward rants, when I spoke to Wilson yesterday, I found him to be surprisingly level-headed about everything, from the state of print (“If you’re a magazine, in this climate, you have t More...

Pretend, for a moment, you have two options:

1. Keep your job at a hip and by all accounts growing magazine, but you have to move to Iowa.

OR

2. Quit your job at the hip and by all accounts growing magazine, but stay in San Francisco.

When Meredith decided to move Readymade from San Francisco to Des Moines (part of a 7 percent overall workforce reduction) I figured there would be a good number—even a dissenting majority—of the staff who would decide not to make the move. However, I didn’t think < More...

RELATED: MPA Cancels AMC

Following the exits of some of its prominent members—including Hachette and New York magazine—and the startling cancellation of the American Magazine Conference—one of the magazine industry’s flashiest events—the Magazine Publishers of America sent a note to its members today criticizing articles about the dropouts (including, presumably, FOLIO:’s) and highlighting what it’s been doing for its dues-paying membership.

Here’s the e-mail:

From: "Nina Link and Joh More...

Time Inc. and Source Interlink announced today that they have reached a multi-year distribution agreement, effectively settling Source's antitrust lawsuit with Time Inc. and Time Warner Retail. It remains to be seen if the other companies named in the suit—American Media, Bauer, Curtis, Hachette, Hudson News, Kable Distribution and News Group—will follow suit, and settle, too.

Here are the statements from Time Inc. and Source.

Time Inc.:

February 19, 2009

Time I More...

The consumer magazine industry took a major hit at the newsstand during the second half of 2008. Of the nearly 500 magazines tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, a staggering 355—some 75 percent—saw their single copy sales decline between June and December, while just 116 managed to increase sales at the newsstand.

One of those 116 was the Atlantic, which increased its single copy sales by … 1 percent. But the magazine is trying to goose that number, and for its March issue, the Atlantic is publishing four quasi-regional editions—New York, Chicago, San Francisco More...

As we found out definitively this week, the consumer magazine industry felt the brunt of the U.S. economic meltdown at the newsstand during the second half of 2008. As we reported, a staggering 355 magazines tracked by ABC—some 75 percent—saw their single copy sales decline between June and December. (Just 116 managed to increase sales at the newsstand.)

There was one major bright spot for publishers, however. Some 257 magazines overdelivered on their rate base guarantees to advertisers, while just 27 missed More...

Last night in New York, the cover of Sports Illustrated’s perennially anticipated (and More...

The announcement by Condé Nast that it is shutting down Domino, its four-year-old shelter title, while not surprising, given the magazine advertising climate, hit harder than most. (On the day the news broke, I got more IMs—many including sad emoticons—than I have for other magazine closings.)

I have an odd, emotional attachment to Domino. Perhaps it’s because their launch party—a swanky, $500,000 bash held in Lower Manhattan—was one of the first magazine launch parties I ever attended.

(It could also be that I have somewhat of an interior design fetish, and sometimes fantasize More...

The February cover of Esquire, featuring—who else?—Barack Obama on its cover, caused a bit of a stir in hardlining church-state circles over a cover “window” that opens up to an ad for the Discovery Channel, as well as a mini-TOC.

Editor David Granger, who’s become something of a serial envelope pusher (see: Esquire’s e-ink cover, margin novella, et More...