FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

The March issue of FOLIO: magazine will feature a Magazine Industry Job Report that looks at the state of working in the publishing industry, everything from hiring trends to salaries, hot jobs to those that are becoming obsolete, to salary growth over the last three years and expectations for the future.

As part of the research for this report, we did a short poll of FOLIO: readers asking how they feel about the future of print magazines. We cross-tabbed the results to break up responses by job discipline. (See below.)

As expected, the majority of 885 respondents think the print product will become increasingly nichified.

The more interesting responses include the gap between those who think print is vi More...

News-media gossip site Gawker caused a stir at the beginning of 2008 when owner Nick Denton sent an internal memo saying that bloggers will be compensated for traffic generated, rather than for the number of posts they make. That set off a firestorm in the blogosphere, with pundits ranging from Valleywag (which published the memo) to Publishing 2.0's Scott Karp debating whether this is part of a trend in which editorial is being valued less for legitimate content and more for flashy, gossipy pieces that drive hits. The debate also focuses on whether a lot of "hits" are necessarily preferable to the "right&q More...

Early versions of digital magazines got a bad rap, thanks to static facsimiles and awkward reader tools that did little to improve the reader experience over print. However, digital editions have been evolving, becoming more seamless with online and offering new opportunities with search and archiving.

They may even show some promise as revenue generators. In a recent Folio: Webinar called Digital Edition Revenue Generation, part of a three-part Digital University Series sponsored by NXTBook Media, three publishers talked about how they're seeing financial returns with digital editions. Hearst Electronics Group created a custom digital edition called Project Analog for one sponsor, while UK-based Graduate Prospects phased out its More...

With the continued softness in medical and pharmaceutical print advertising, Advanstar’s reorganization of its Healthcare Group around an online portal called ModernMedicine.com isn’t that much of a surprise.

But what does raise eyebrows is the blunt editorial critique of Advanstar Life Science Group executive president Steve Morris. And he may be right. Editors who aren’t adapting to the online opportunity may soon find themselves called out by the business side, and rightfully so.

“We’ve reduced the editorial count on our traditional books because the books have less frequency and fewer pages,” says Morris. “The m More...

Even the most technology-challenged journalist has at least a perfunctory Facebook or LinkedIn profile (my wife, who is eight years younger than me was shocked I had a Facebook account before her).

But knowing how to leverage these services is the key to avoiding becoming part of the digital white noise. Brad Kenney, associate editor at IndustryWeek and the new president of ASBPE's Cleveland chapter, is trying to spread journalistic online competencies through the association (read his blog at http://asbpecleveland.blogspot.com). Kenney advises that social network profiles should be treated almost like your company's Web site-make it releva More...

Web site relaunches, job boards, social networks, Webinars, podcasts, videocasts, etc. Most magazine publishers are scrambling to ramp up their online offerings as fast as they can. However, in the rush to ramp up online, management and the major disciplines (sales, editorial and circulation) often take for granted that what’s being built can be done quickly and easily, and overload the online and IT staffs with “me first” requests. “People think online is easy, that standards and guidelines can be gotten around, that things can be done far quicker than they actually can with fewer people, none of which is true,” says the online manager at one b-to-b publisher. “Yes, you can launch a Web site easier and more cost-effec More...

This year's ABM Top Management meeting featured some of the best content I've heard at the annual event (which I've been going to on and off since the late Nineties), thanks in large part to the refreshing openness of many of the speakers, particularly ABM chairman and Hanley Wood CEO Frank Anton and Hanley Wood Business Media president Peter Goldstone, who not only acknowledged the challenges they are facing in developing multimedia platforms but also offered detail on how they are addressing those challenges. Anton made the point that going digital won't be a cheap and easy fix and that publishers need to take the offensive. "Since 9/11, this is an industry that's played defense," Anton said, noting Hanley Wood has invested $ More...

Editors are faced with not only a demanding and ever-expanding list of must-have skill sets, but also a change in mindset. Two of the smartest editors we’ve spoken to over the last year—one from the consumer side, one from b-to-b—talk about what they’ll be looking for in editorial talent over the next few years.

Alfred Edmond, Editor-in-Chief, Black Enterprise

“At least three skills will be key across the board for people in editorial. First, we’ll need to be better than ever at spotting and developing talent, especially people with the right attitude and degree of intelligence and flexibility.  Print journalists will end up needing to be able to help develop a television show, content for a Web site, podcasts More...

There's a pretty vocal segment of the publishing industry that says production technology has advanced to the point where problems such as color consistency, fonts and high res/low res shouldn't exist. Time Inc. maintains they don't experience any of the common problems associated with file management. Influential production consultant Bo Sacks has previously written, "Quality control has been reduced to a logarithmic equation. You can take the subjective out of the press. It not only can be done, it already has been done. Wake up and move on to more important issues."

Still, while the technological advancement is acknowledged, problems continue to exist with standards and human implementation of the technology. And perh More...

Few examples of blogging gone wrong are as prominent as the recent case of Jim Zumbo, former hunting editor of Time Inc.’s Outdoor Life the second largest outdoor magazine in the U.S. In a February 16 blog post (since removed from the Outdoor Life site), Zumbo expressed his thoughts on so-called “assault rifles” by saying, “Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them…I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist rifles.’” The response was swift, and not just from the NRA. The post generated more than 2,000 comments, most of them negative. Hunting and shooting cha More...

Don’t have video on your site? That’s so 2005. Or at least, that’s the popular thinking. SI.com re-launched last month with a video-heavy design (including a video box moved to the top of the page) and CarandDriver.com recently debuted a program that lets viewers take a virtual test drive.

However, turning video into a sustainable business model is proving to be a challenge. Even Google has stumbled by briefly featuring an Allstate ad in a Charlie Rose clip that blogger Scott Karp called “as interruptive, untargeted and utterly old school as anything mass TV advertising has ever inflicted on viewers.”

Video may offer a temporary spike in both viewers and advertisers but video by itself won’t keep them coming ba More...

American Business Media announced the finalists for its 2007 Jesse H. Neal Awards today. Considered the “Oscars” of business journalism, the Neal Awards, now entering its 53rd year, represent the best of b-to-b journalism.

So how come “the best” always seems to be the same handful of large publishers? A look at this year’s finalists reveals some familiar names: Nielsen Business Media (seven nominations), Hanley Wood (10 nominations), McGraw-Hill (eight nominations), Crain Communications (five nominations) and Advanstar Communications (12 nominations?!?). Some of the usual magazine standbys are here as well: Ziff Davis’ Baseline (Grand Neal Winner in 2005), Nielsen’s Editor & Publisher and Advanstar’s Medical Ec More...