FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

For FOLIO:’s 2009 predictions feature (“117 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2009”), Raymond Roker, co-founder and publisher of Urb magazine, predicted that “former foes will share information on clients and prospects.”

In the newspaper industry, on the editorial side, this is already happening.

There was a story posted on Sunday by the Associated Press (itself a literal product of the idea of newspaper rivals sharing news resources) about how Texas' Dallas Morning More...

Alpinist, a 9,000-circulation quarterly about alpine-style mountain climbing which ceased publication in October, has been sold. According to a source, the six-year-old, high-gloss, high production-value magazine with a small but passionate community of climbers, was sold via a “live phone auction” for—wait for it—$71,000.

The buyer is Height of Land Publications, Vermont-based publisher of Backcountry magazine. The seller, Marc Ewing, had pumped at least $2 million into Alpinist, but failed to bring it to profitability. The magazine launched in 2002.

What He More...

8020 Media, a publisher heralded for its community-driven editorial model, is shutting down. Here’s the memo from CEO Mitchell Fox (via NYT Bits):

In the face of these extraordinary economic times, in a devastated advertising climate, we can no longer continue to operate the business due to lack of funds, and hence we have to close 8020 Media effective immediately.

There is no doubt that our company has done what no others have yet to do…that is, prove that the web and print can work effectively to More...

Just about sums it up, doesn’t it?

We just published our annual predictions feature and year in review—usually two of my favorite pieces to produce. Not this year. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of the blood that was shed in 2008 has left many people who are lucky enough to still have a job bloodied, bruised, and cynical about the magazine industry. And rightfully so.

But there were some glimmers of hope in 2008 which were, at least from my perspective, inspirational. Maybe they don’t all have direct implications for the swift return of the print magazine business, but at least the More...

GQ’s much talked-about January 2009 cover—featuring Jennifer Aniston wearing nothing more than a tie and a smile—has been covered up by Hudson News in New York’s Grand Central Terminal. The popular newsstand has placed a piece of paper across the issue in its window display.

Copies inside the store, however, remain uncovered.

GQ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time Hudson News has covered up a magazine’s scantily-clad cover model. In fact, it happens fairly often, although I can’t recall it happening to a general interest magazine.

In June 2006, Hudson News censored More...

Oh boy. Not this again:

-----Original Message-----
From: NETWORK
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 9:12 AM
To: Dylan Stableford
Subject: Dropping you a note about landing at Mygazines

Pierre Bisaillon has sent you a message on FOLIO: mediaPRO

Hi Dylan,

Thanks for adding me as a friend.

I wanted to let you know that I will now be heading up corporate and business development at Mygazines. Mygazines has had quite an interesting past 6 months as many of you are well aware.

Over the coming mo More...

Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair’s cranky contributing editor, Rupert Murdoch biographer and noted firestarter, stated publicly that Newsweek wouldn’t last another five years.  After last week’s news—first reported by FOLIO: (“Newsweek Mulls Dramatic Drop in Circulation”)—that the magazine is considering a huge rate base cut, Wolfe says that he appears to have been “optimistic.”

He’s now revised it to two:

Sometime around the fourth quarter of next year, More...

Jesse Oxfeld, former Gawker scribe and current senior editor at New York magazine, gives a great oral history of Time Inc.'s once-lavish expense accounts.

Take, for instance, former staff writer Joel Stein's (via the Daily Beast):

“I somehow got them to pay for my Rainbow Room membership. Free breakfast every day over at the top of 30 Rock. I think I just sort of snuck it in. I don’t think there was a rationale at all. And then my Friar’s Club membership I also expensed. There was some rule that may ha More...

Newsmax, the conservative newsmagazine, is celebrating its 10th anniversary (and Barack Obama’s first six months in office) with something unusual: a 12-day Mediterranean cruise. (Open question: What publisher would want to be stuck on a cruise ship with their readers—or anyone—for 12 days straight?)

On the agenda is nothing short of plotting the future of the GOP and “reshaping of the political landscape.” Stops include Rome, Monte Carlo, London, Barcelona, Lisbon, Bilbao, Bordeaux and Tangiers. Fox News analyst Dick Morris is among the “famous personalities” scheduled to appear.

The cost? Cabins are More...

With all the layoffs in the media industry this year, it was just a matter of time before an enterprising victim decided to throw a party for all of the freshly unemployed.

Enter ex-Radar executive editor Aaron Gell, whose cheeky American Society of Shit-Canned Media Elites (“ASSME”—a dig at the MPA’s ASME) is reinventing the famed “pink slip parties” of the dot.com bust era with a holiday party next week in New York. (Say what you want More...

Last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research made official the financial bloodletting evident from everyone from Goldman to Gucci for over a year now: we are in a recession.

What’s that? You need more proof? Look no further than Town & Country’s December editor’s letter.

Editor-in-chief Pamela Fiori did some digging in the magazine’s archives, combing through T&C issues between 1930 and 1934 to see how the magazine for and about the affluent covered the Great Depression.

What did she find?