“If you’re going to have a magazine in 2012, there better be a point to it,” says Mike Albanese, publisher of SPIN.

In what may seem like an obvious statement, Albanese manages to summarize the movement of the entire magazine industry. Print is often no longer substantial enough to act as a publication’s sole business; but it still holds a place in editorial strategy and audience fondness. SPIN, with a lowered print frequency, slashed rate base and realigned digital focus, is positioning its print product to be just that.

The new SPIN, now published six times a year, has a larger trim size (up 9.5” x 12 More...

Few things have caused more disruption for business marketers and business media than the changing nature of demand generation. Email, the Internet and social media have enabled drastic new ways to generate demand and engage with customers and prospects. As a result, many of the laws of physics in advertising and marketing - reach and frequency, brand awareness, brand preference and call to action - have been upended and replaced by brand generation to create and sustain a more substantial engagement with customers. The challenge for b-to-b marketers and media providers alike however, is that we are still too often operating in the old world, focused on driving “opens”, “clicks” and “likes”, which do not suggest customer inte More...

The year, as it always does, has flown by and we're already in the midst of compiling our annual list of the top innovators in the magazine business and the markets that intersect and influence it—the Folio: 40.

We're excited to announce that starting now, you can have a hand in how the list turns out by nominating a colleague—either at your company or from another one—that has had a meaningful impact on a product, company or even market.

We're looking for nominations in the following categories:

C-Level Visionaries
Top execs that transform culture, company or markets

Industry Influencers More...

The sale of Ziff Davis Enterprise to online marketing company QuinStreet Friday raises some interesting and, on the surface, worrisome thoughts on the role brands and content play in connecting buyers and sellers.

I should mention that we don't yet really know how QuinStreet is planning to incorporate ZDE's brands into its operation. The company declined to offer any details in that regard. What we do know is ZDE employees are in the dark as well, with the bulk of them helping transition the brands before their positions are phased out. As many as 100 of More...

Demand Media has lost three of its founders. According to a report from paidContent, Larry Fitzgibbon, Joe Perez and Steven Kydd are leaving the company.

Fitzgibbon was EVP of international operations; Perez was executive vice president of products; and Kydd acted as EVP of studios. All three have already been removed from Demand’s masthead.

A rep for Demand said the exits were “just coincidence”, and departed execs will “pursue separate opportunities and new business ventures� More...

Every now and then, when our own newsstand landscape begins to look too homogenous and our cover formulas too tired we look overseas to shake us up a little.

Or a lot—the polybag premium craze that swept our consumer publications a decade or two ago (but who’s counting) was sparked by one UK company.

Polybag premiums to some degree have, after many years, run their course here in the U.S., but any publisher with a serious commitment to a UK distribution is aware that it is still the vernacular on the English newsstand.

Partworks are a UK newsstand innovation that take the practice of polybagging premiums to a new level. They offer expensive, high-quality premiums on every product and, as the name indicates, More...

More than a few magazine and media executives spent the holidays putting the finishing touches on deal closures. We're only 3 weeks into January and there's been a flurry of M&A action—from decently big deals to small.

Here's a recap:

Today of course Meredith announced it's buying Allrecipes.com from Reader's Digest Association, advancing a deep dive strategy into the food vertical as fast as RDA is pulling away from it, having also bought Everyday With Rachael Ray from them. The deal closely followed Meredith's More...

In an attempt to protect copyrighted material, the U.S. Congress has been mulling a proposal to curb access to websites, search engine results and domain names, among other things, something that has seemingly outraged many in the digital community.

The bill, entitled the Stop Online Piracy Act [H.R. 3261], has so infuriated Wikipedia that it blacked out its site today. Google has also promoted the bill’s destruction, with its clever logo on its homepage blacked out for the remainder of the day and linke More...

THE PATIENT: Success
AGE: 114 years
VITALS: Improving
PROGNOSIS: Good

The kind of high-profile success that Success’ readers desperately desire has largely eluded the magazine itself over the course of its long life. The title has encountered at least two near-death experiences, yet fought back to publish another day. On that basis alone, some may award this book a medal for its mettle.

The most recent incarnation of the magazine, which emerged from ownership’s self-induced coma in 2008, shows promise. (Its claimed, unaudited, circulation is 200,000.) It als More...

This week, music magazine SPIN announced its decision to run the lion’s share of its music reviews on Twitter in 2012. Under the handle @SPINreviews, SPIN’s eight staff editors (and a team of freelancers) will weigh in on over 1,500 albums in 140 characters or less throughout the year. The decision comes amidst other changes at SPIN, including an editorial realignment marking a heavier focus on digital.

On SPIN’s blog, senior editor Christopher Weingarten makes valid p More...

The MPA released full-year 2011 PIB numbers today and, as individual consumer publishers already know by now, the third and fourth quarters were not very kind.

There were some exceptions among specific titles of course, which I'll get to in a bit, but in 2011 overall advertising revenues were flat and pages fell about 3 percent compared to 2010.

In the first quarter of 2011, pages jumped 2.5 percent and revenue was up 6 percent compared to same period 2010. In Q2, in hindsight, you can see the slide beginning. Pages were flat at a .3 percent gain over same period 2010 and revenue was up only 2.4 percent.
More...

In an interesting move, TIME magazine will run the cover art from its December 12, 2011 issue again on its January 16, 2012 issue. The photo of Mitt Romney’s picture is the same in both treatments, but the headlines and positioning of the image covering the upcoming edition will change. See the covers, and read TIME managing editor Rick Stengel’s letter about the Iowa caucuses as well as the cover decision, below.

Why Iowa Matters (Even If It Shouldn’t)

Iowa is an outlier. The 122,000 people who showed up to vot More...