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RELATED: Troubled Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy Protection

Nearly a year after real estate mogul Sam Zell took the Tribune Company private in a dramatic $8.2 billion buyout, the troubled company—which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Cubs baseball franchise, among other properties—has filed for bankruptcy protection. (The Cubs franchise is not part of the filing, the company said.)

Zell said a “perfect storm” of economic factors led the Chicago-based company to file for bankruptcy.

“A precipitous decline i More...

At the lunch break of the WWD Media + Style summit at the Pierre Hotel Thursday, attendees—300 or so media and fashion executives, most of them female—were still talking about the morning’s flashy opening keynote presentation by David Lauren, son of Ralph and senior vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications for Polo Ralph Lauren, where he oversees $200 million in global advertising and marketing campaigns for the company’s 19 brands.

Lauren—cocky, unshaven, a wild, unbrushed mane of hair, looking like he rolled out of bed in a bespoke suit—has experience in print magazines, founding the now-defu More...

A week and a half ago, ESPN The Magazine published a cover feature—“Living Scared”—on NFL security. (The story’s dek read: “A year after Sean Taylor's murder, NFL players still live in fear.”)

You can see the impact of Taylor's death in the body language of 315-pound Chiefs rookie Branden Albert as he leaves a club, checking and rechecking his rearview mirror to make sure he isn't being followed. It's in the nervous laughter of Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger when he recalls the time a weapon was waved in his face. It compels Ja More...

During her keynote yesterday at the WWD Media + Style Summit, Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, was not only refreshingly blunt ("I think we've all stopped lying to each other" she said of the state magazine business); she was refreshingly, if cautiously, optimistic about the future of print, telling the audience (the most attractive, sweetest smelling of any magazine conference I’ve ever attended, by the way) that the November issue of Cosmopolitan sold some 450,000 more copies than it did a year ago.

“Why the enormous bu More...

Flip.com, Condé Nast's expensive social network/virtual scrapbooking outpost for teen girls, has officially flopped. The site, which Condé acquired in 2007, will be shuttered in two weeks.

Like most publishers, Condé Nast has been scrutinizing its portfolio in recent months looking to cut costs—including some 5 percent of its overall staff, according to various reports. Unlike most publishers, though, the company has not been shy about cutting back on the online side (see: Portfolio.com et al).

Here's the note (More...

When it comes to rock-n-roll, some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (Have you ever heard or seen Mr. Brownstone, the Guns 'N’ Roses cover band? They’re awesome!). Others say kill your idols.

When it comes to magazine cover design, the best approach probably falls somewhere in between. Future US Inc.’s Pregnancy went for broke for its recent November issue cover, attempting a note-for-note “cover” of Rolling Stone’s infamous 1993 portrait of Janet Jackson featuring a pair of strategically placed hands. (Pregnancy swapped out Janet with Jan from NBC’s The Office.)

More...

Ann Moore? Really? I mean, really?

I don't get terribly hung up on awards, especially in the publishing industry—a particularly self-congratulatory group that doles out a disproportionate amount of them. (It’s not that I don’t love the magazine industry—I love baseball, and baseball gives out an absurd amount of awards, too.)

Still, today’s announcement by the Magazine Publis More...

On Friday, FOLIO: reported that Penton had decided to significantly scale back the print version of Remix from a monthly to a quarterly, positioning it as a "Web-first" brand.

Here's how publisher Joanne Zola described the shift in an e-mail to advertisers:

Dear Advertiser,

In January, Remix will shift 100% to a “Web first” property.

Remix will continue to serve the growing market of emerging music producers, engineers and artists, and the facilities and services that feed them. But we will now focus our content where this market More...

Along with its coverage of the Reader’s Digest Association’s mega deal with a mega church to produce a magazine and a social networking site RDA calls a “Facebook for Christians,” the New York Times reports that RDA CEO Mary Berner is “casting about” for a new name for the company.

We’ve heard rumblings about this since as early as September. It appears that even Berner—who has been somewhat of a lightning rod since coming over to Pleasantville fro More...

Ever wonder what Michael Phelps smells like?

People magazine, which has a history of experimenting with sensory advertising within its pages, is set to publish a “scratch-n-sniff” section in its Sexiest Man Alive issue.

The magazine, which hits newsstands on Friday, includes a section dubbed “Sexy Scents” with “scratch-n-sniff” photos of Gossip Girl actor Chace Crawford, film actor Taye Diggs, Law & Order star Chris Meloni and U.S. Olympic gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps—each of whom “describe the fragrance that makes them feel their sexiest.” (Crawford chose freshly cut grass, telling the magazine he “g More...

Sid Holt, the American Society of Magazine Editor’s newly-appointed CEO, said recently that ASME is working on revamping its editorial guidelines to address the industry’s increasingly blurry church-state boundary between advertising and editorial. “They don’t seem to be current, so a lot of questions come up about them,” Holt, a former editorial director at Nielsen, told Mediaweek. “We’ve had situations where we’ve seen violations of the spirit of the guidelines but not the guidelines themselv More...

Interesting quote in the story about layoffs at Dallas' D magazine, via executive editor Tim Rogers:

"What that means is I'll be writing and illustrating every story in our February issue, for starters."

Full text of Rogers' e-mail to FOLIO::

Here's what I can tell you about the cuts:

We've experienced explosive growth since I came to work for the company seven years ago. We assembled the best team of media professionals in North Texas -- if not the Milky Way. Every one of the 14 people we let go from the magazine division will More...