FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

I interviewed Kristy Kaus, Active Interest Media's research director, for a story I wrote in the January issue of FOLIO:. Kaus has been doing cover research for a number of AIM's enthusiast titles, and her program has provided a measurable boost in newsstand sales. The research is done via online surveys-a method that puts cover testing well in the realm of small to mid-sized enthusiast publishers that otherwise wouldn't spring for a full-on, focus-group or direct mail approach.

The testing is performed through a proprietary Web-based survey platform developed by Kaus, and can be executed with a 36-hour turnaround. If you're feeling skittish about using an online-based testing group, don't be. Kaus notes that readers are typicall More...

If you haven't stopped by our massive (and growing) list of magazine predictions for 2008, do so. In the meantime, for those of you who are more financially inclined, I've pulled out the banker predictions and compiled them here.

Interestingly—predictably?—there's a mix of optimism and wariness for the year ahead. On the one hand, we're coming off an amazing run of M&A action fueled by the deep pockets of private equity. On the other, we're still smarting a bit form last summer's credit crunch and staring at a possible recession in 2008, which may stop the overly-leveraged dead in thei More...

The New York Times reports that Jeffrey Bewkes [right], who takes over as Time Warner CEO in January, has "quietly" hired Douglas Shapiro to head up investor relations. Shapiro was formerly an MD and research analyst for Banc of America Securities and joined Time Warner a month ago.

Coincidentally or not, a February report by Shapiro on Time Warner had a buy recommendation on the stock at $25 a share because "we think there is a chance it pursues a restructuring eventually, including possibly divesting publishing or AOL, More...

An e-mail from an "industry observer" on yesterday's purchase of Publishing Group of America by Bain Capital Partners and Shamrock Capital Growth Fund:

"I think this is potentially a fabulous buy for these two investor groups. PGA is a group that has successfully launched two huge winners. Controlled circ so the inserts are force fed. Originally designed as the "Parade Magazine" for the weekly and small daily newspaper industry. Good editorial products. And with their circ base, a strong buy for national advertisers-especially More...

Felix Dennis has a little more work to do yet on his weekly news compilation The Week. He tells David Carr that he'll be expanding the magazine into more markets and has fended off some significant offers. "Cross my heart and hope to die, I have already been offered hundreds of millions of dollars for it."

Even after selling off Maxim, Stuff and music magazine Blender to Quadrangle-backed Kent Brownridge in mid-2007, Dennis declined to sel More...

Gordon Hughes and company at ABM fashioned their Top Management Meeting held this week out in Chicago around a concept Hughes coined as “Brandscape”: Leveraging a publisher’s brand (i.e., the magazine) across an ever expanding product platform.

Hughes noted that member companies are reporting relatively flat growth for their print brands in 2007, around 2 percent to 4 percent, while other products are growing at a much faster clip: digital at a 14 percent average, custom at 18 percent and events at about 6 percent. Events are expected to pull even next year with print, achieving revenue parity. So it goes without saying that there should be some consideration of how publishers are both leveraging their brand identity and co More...

You can't say Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner is a big fan of digital media. The CEO of Wenner Media, which also publishes US Weekly and Men's Journal, recently told BusinessWeek's Jon Fine "we never lost tons of money chasing down ridiculous online ideas." Nevertheless, Wenner has finally chased down what many publishers have been tinkering with for the last few years: digital editions. The last in a three-edition 40th anniversary series is More...

Moderating a panel of tech media publishers and bloggers yesterday at the Future of Business Media conference in New York, Hammock Publishing CEO and blogger Rex Hammock asked panelist Bob Carrigan (IDG CEO) outright if IDG was indeed quietly planning to relaunch The Industry Standard, the once high-flying magazine that covered, and famously mirrored, the stratospheric highs and crushing lows of the Internet economy circa 1998-2001. After some demurring, Carrigan said that yes, the brand would relaunch in a "blog format" More...

The finalists for the American Society of Magazine Editors' (ASME) second annual Best Cover Contest were announced today. The judges apparently have a thing for The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert-his image is on three of the finalists.

L-R: Best Celebrity Cover, Best Concept Cover, Best Coverline

And they like babes on buildings, too.

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The Economist puffs into the print-is-dead smoke-screen with a story noting that consumer magazines ‘have problems.' And you'll never guess the culprit: The Internet. Apparently people are ‘spending more time' there and an ‘even greater share of advertising spending' is moving online. How much? We don't know, the writer doesn't provide any metrics.

Worse: ‘Magazine units are mostly a drag on growth for their parents.' How much of a drag? Still don't know. But apparently they're a drag on at least two parents-maybe, and possibly more-because Time Warner is fending off rumors of a Time Inc. divestment and ‘people in the industry' are More...

Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune reports that The Economist is beginning a $1 million marketing push to boost readership in Chicago. It's part of a multi-city campaign that also includes Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Baltimore and Austin, Texas. Chicago's slice of the pie? 25,000 of the 700,000 More...

Keith Kelly at The New York Post reports that news mag U.S. News and World Report will be increasing its frequency of ‘Best Of' issues-stretching, for example, ‘Best Hospitals' to ‘Best Kids Hospitals' for the September 3 issue.

Kelly notes that a source concedes the magazine is "effectively tossing in the towel on any plan to try to compete with Time and Newsweek on news."

U.S. News president Bill Holiber told Folio: basically the same thing two years ago when it announced a strategic sh More...