So why can't the Grey Lady scrape by with a little more profit? Forbes just announced it's annual rankings for the wealthiest people world-wide, and Carlos Slim Helu - who in 2008 became the largest shareholder in The Times and arguably saved the paper from bankruptcy - has been announced the #1 richest person. (more...)

This morning the Associated Press joined Talking Points Memo and Gawker as practitioners of the 'open notebook' method of reporting — well, inadvertently. (more...)

POLL The media loves one-year anniversaries, hundred-day anniversaries — any excuse to zoom in on the thing they've been covering all along. This week's one-year anniversary of the financial crisis -- a gold mine for business magazines! Or a call for gold spray paint, if you're BusinessWeek. Mary Louise Parker -- the maintstream, not to mention sterile, face of rampant marijuana use, after her five-season success on Showtime's Weeds. With her help, and some magic leaf, this cover could actually grab a few non-Fortune-reading stoners. And "Wall Street: One Year Later" up top is a nifty hard-news peg. Mediaite Grade (B+): Hey, an issue of Fortune about pot -- that's pretty cool. Oh wait, Sage, the color, what are you doing here? You're not very cool. If this cover was trying to make marijuana seem staid (which it probably is), then it's a wild success. We wonder how their pot story stacks up to New York mag's.
Before we snub The Economist, we want to get one thing straight: We know the cover isn't what sells the magazine (it's the incisive content, dummy). That said, we have to ask if these Economist covers are a nose-in-the-air smirk at the rest of the magazine industry, or just the product of uninspired designers who hate sharing an office with neurotic econ-types? Mediaite Grade (D): We don't need to beat a dead horse, or a series of plastic horses revolving in a circle, but this cover is bush league. Tucking the dollar sign ornament at the top of the carousel into the deck? It's not cute. It's not imaginative. We worry that a bunch of professionals actually sat down together and brainstormed this cover, or spent any time thinking about it at all. We've seen you do your best work before, Economist design team, now keep it up. If for no other reason, to set a good example for Newsweek (their cover this week -- yikes).
Magazines are at their best when they jump on the next hot thing, rather than just distilling a week or month's worth of news. The latest edition of Forbes does both, highlighting the story of high-speed computer trading, which has been percolating all summer —  a smart and timely take on the one-year anniversary of the financial collapse. Mediaite Grade (A-): Visually, the cover's play with font and depth is sharp; the psuedo-pyramid of faces at the bottom, illuminated by the chilling glow of computer screens, is electric. Pick up Forbes for a smart, forward-looking take on the financial world, one year after the collapse.
It's a scary time for BusinessWeek. People are talking about buying the magazine for $1 . We wanted this cover to be a ray of light for the floundering title. Though cheap, spray-painting a gun gold and pasting it on the cover, wasn't exactly the sizzle or pop we were hoping for. Mediaite Grade (C+): We wonder, is there a BusinessWeek intern walking around somewhere with gold spray paint on his hands? We like the idea of putting a gun on the cover, but this one looks too fake, too gold. And the yellow at the top of the cover doesn't exactly complement the gold below (not even yellow could make the "America's Manufacturing Crisis" banner exciting). Add BusinessWeek's big, red, blocky masthead to the mix and watch the colors clash. Let's see some hustle, BusinessWeek. COVER WARS WINNER: Forbes nailed the one-year anniversary with a cover that subtly acknowledged the bench mark, but took the story in a new direction -- the future of finance. And they had fun with the cover -- not too conservative, not too boring, not too tacky. Take notes, BW, before you're liquidated. Which business mag cover is your favorite?(polls)

In The September Issue, Vogue's Anna Wintour is referred to as the Pope for her autonomy and infallibility. And though the film documents a time at Vogue before the peak of the recession and subsequent ad sales avalanche, Forbes concurs that Wintour's power and influence may still be at an all-time high, ranking her first among "2009's Most Powerful Fashion Magazine Editors." But more interesting than the number one spot are the multimedia moves Wintour and her fellow editors made to retain relevance as print magazines continue their economic free-fall, not to mention Forbes' overlap with our own Power Grid rankings. (more...)

It's no secret that plummeting ad sales is the biggest challenge facing the newspaper industry today. Online advertising, for a variety of reasons, does not generate the same revenue that print advertising has traditionally done. To make up for the lack publishers have been considering any manner of income generators. However according to an piece on Forbes.com today, the solution may be as simple as getting readers to cough up a whole lot of personal information. (more...)

Yesterday we picked up the news that Jim Spanfeller was stepping down as the CEO of Forbes.com. Many saw it as yet another by-product of a declining ad market which has hit the business journals particularly hard. (more...)

It's been a tough few months for businesss journals. First Portfolio folded in April. Then this week it was reported that BusinessWeek was for sale - some even suggested that its price tag was $1 for anyone who wants to take on its annual losses.  Fortune just announced a re-design in light of a 39% decrease in ad pages. And now the CEO of Forbes.com has stepped down. (more...)

The Magazine Editors category on the Power Grid has engendered some good debate here at Mediaite's global headquarters. Summing up: should a Magazine Editor be rewarded more for the public profile of the title they oversee, or more for how they promote their own name. Well judging by the most recent rankings it appears that the side that argued on behalf of magazine title awareness won the debate. (more...)

The A.I.G. Financial Products unit is to the global financial crisis what rickety levees were to Hurricane Katrina. But as Michael Lewis points out in his excellent article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, F.P., as it’s called, used to be the envy of Wall Street. In 2001, the elite unit accounted for a stunning 15% – roughly $300 million – of the insurance giant’s overall profits. And it charged fees that would make most hedge fund operators blanch. (more...)

The ad sales team at Hachette-Filipacchi’s offices were likely high-fiving each other as Forbes writer Lauren Streib reported – nay trumpeted – the historic moment in the still-lucrative-for-now Women’s Fashion category in magazine publishing: (more...)