As you know, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. And as far as magazine chatter goes, it's seemingly been a long week for Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner.

Let's start here: the magazine published its seemingly four-hundredth 40th anniversary issue with something called "Indie Rock Universe," a nine-page spread-sponsored by cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds-that drew the ire of indie rock bands and those who monitor Big Tobacco (think Pacino in The Insider) for using cartoons in what they claim is an adver More...

RELATED FOLIO: VIDEO: Is Print Dead?

I’m not sure if it’s because more of my time these days is spent meeting with media management, investigating possible acquisition opportunities, or simply doing more research. But it seems that there is a growing debate in our industry.

I’d call it the print is dead vs. “I’m not dead yet” (Monty Python reference) crowd.

The print is dead group (Steve Ballmer, who famously said that in 10 years all media will be digital, serves as the group’s unofficial chairman) has strong revenue growth on it More...

A pair of stories FOLIO: reported on this week–the federal suit brought against cigarette-maker R.J. Reynolds over an alleged "advertorial" that contained cartoons, and a Harper's Bazaar cover that contained 258 sponsored Swarovski crystals–required comment from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the arm of the Magazine Publishers of America that issues members guidelines on such foggy areas as magazine ethics.

Here's ASME's response:

From: Kaha More...

This entry is for PWLA (people who like acronyms). Many marketers (at least in tech, when I am) chant "R-O-I, R-O-I, R-O-I" whenever a salesperson is present. And woe to the salesperson that wants to talk about PRINT! They claim to need Return On Investment, and of course the only way to provide that is with online marketing (measuring clicks, click-thru percentage and lead generation). Marketers want a Silver Bullet–something that turns their art into a science. They think they’ve found it. Until you start asking questions.

Remember good-ole Bingo cards? Oh, I meant “Reader Service Cards." How did we handle claim 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...

Don Imus returned to the airwaves this week—the first time since being dismissed in April over racially-charged on-air comments he made about the Rutgers woman's basketball team—with a pair of female comedians, both African American. Essence magazine news editor Tatsha Robertson scored a bit of a coup with one of them, 33-year-old Karith Foster, and posted the Q+A on the Essence Web site. In it, Foster responds to claims that she "sold out" by joining him on the air.

Kudos to Essence for staying on top More...

Harper’s Bazaar recently embedded 5,000 copies of its December issue cover with “Swarovski crystal elements”—258 of them, to be exact, hand-affixed by Swarovski—and sent them to VIPs in the fashion, beauty and media industries, including, naturally, me.

A week ago, 10,000 copies of New York’s December 10 issue were printed with a four-page cover wrap advertising the New Museum—using part of the magazine’s logo in its design. The special copies were mailed to a select list of the city's "culturati," Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5, the a More...

In a recent test on its own newsletters, MarketingSherpa wanted to know which two- or three-word phrase could get subscribers to click through to another article. Here's what they measured:

• "Click to continue": 8.53% clickthrough rate
• "Continue to article": 3.3% clickthrough rate
• "Read more": (-)1.8% clickthrough rate

MarketingSherpa shared, "With these results, we had a strong feeling that the front-runner, 'Click to continue,' would win in the A/B test, and it did, producing 3.5% more clicks than 'Continue to article.' Needless to say, we immediately switched the words in our link in all of our newsletters."

"Listen, the Web is the most exciting part of a modern journalism enterprise for ambitious writers and editors. If they haven't figured it out by now, to hell with them."

Those are the words of Jon Friedman in a column published this week on MarketWatch. You can read the rest of his comments, born of a frustrating experience at the American Magazine Conference, by clicking here.

Now it's worth noting for the thousandth time that I am not one of those people who believe print is dead. Rather, I believe that More...

In my capacity as Discover magazine CEO, I had lunch last week with a leading environmental scientist and blogger. After a brief but stimulating chat about the climate crisis, I steered the conversation around to my more parochial concern: Can I dramatically increase my Web traffic by adding more blogs?

He was skeptical to say the least. Incumbents in this market have significant first mover advantages. My friend launched his environment blog in 2004, a year before the Huffington Post but a good five years after Boing Boing. Since th More...

Most magazine designers have come across references to the legendary Aspen—a multimedia-filled “magazine in a box” published between 1965 and 1971—though few have actually seen a copy. In addition to articles, Aspen included phonograph records and several issues came with Super-8’s. (For our younger readers, Super-8 was kind of an early Quicktime.) Well, the folks at Ubu have provided a tantalizing look at some of those Aspen pages. The images are not as large as a designer would ask for, and some of Ubu’s attempts at recreating the magazine as Web pages fall flat, but they do provide m More...

I just returned from a sales trip on the West Coast. I am always looking for ways to keep fighting the wacky perception that print is dead, as is regularly reported in print media-Doh! One of the problems was typified by a large client who said he wants to measure the success of a marketing effort on the very next day, and since you could not do that with print, he was only using online media.

Now there are many things one can respond to here, but I want to focus on the metrics. It is very difficult to measure the results of a print ad campaign in a trade publication on a daily basis. It's not how they work. You don't measure the speed of a glacier More...