All grown up: Liza Soberano poses for Cosmo

MANILA – The baby is now a lady.

“Dolce Amore” star Liza Soberano is the latest cover girl of Cosmopolitan Philippines, a magazine that features sex and beauty tips for modern women.

The actress is seen wearing a figure-hugging black dress on the cover of Cosmo’s July 2016 issue which was released on the magazine’s Facebook page on Tuesday.

 

Soberano, who turned 18 last January, has been featured in several fashion and beauty publications.

But this is the first time that the actress appeared on Cosmo, which is popular for its annual “bachelor bash” events.

Her love team partner, Enrique Gil, walked down the runway in the 2011 edition of Cosmo’s bachelor bash.

In January 2015, netizens reacted to the Cosmo debut of teen star Kathryn Bernardo.

Many of them noted that the actress, who is 18 at the time, is “too young” to appear in such a publication.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Penthouse halts magazine after 50 years, goes digital

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FHM to cease publication

MANILA - The publisher of FHM is suspending the magazine's publication after more than 30 years in circulation, it was announced on Tuesday.

In a statement posted on its website, Bauer Media explained that "over time young men's media habits have continually moved towards mobile and social."

A report from The Guardian revealed that FHM's circulation fell to less than 67,000 for the first six months of 2015, or 20 percent less than that of the year before.

The Facebook page of FHM issued its own statement, saying: "Unfortunately it's true: it has been announced today the intention to suspend publication of FHM."

"It's been an absolute joy producing the magazine over the years. Thank you for all your support - we will keep you updated with developments over the coming weeks," it added.

Bauer Media also announced that it is suspending publication of a similar magazine called Zoo, which was launched back in 2004.

First published as "For Him Magazine" in 1985, FHM dominated the men's market during the 1990s and went on to launch a series of international editions. It is perhaps best known for its "100 Sexiest Women in the World" list.

FHM Philippines has yet to release a statement on the matter.

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Amazon founder Bezos to buy the Washington Post

Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos will buy the Washington Post newspaper for $250 million in a surprise deal that ends the Graham family's 80-year ownership and hands one of the country's most influential publications to the tech entrepreneur.

Bezos, hailed by many as a visionary who helped transform Internet retail, called his acquisition a personal endeavor and reassured Post employees and readers he will preserve the paper's journalistic tradition, while driving innovation.

The acquisition, the latest in a flurry of recent media deals including the New York Times Co's sale of the Boston Globe for $70 million, is a further indication of the unprecedented challenges newspapers face as advertising revenue and readership decline.

Shares of the Washington Post Co climbed more than 5 percent to $599.85 after hours - their highest level in almost five years.

"I understand the critical role the Post plays in Washington, DC and our nation, and the Post's values will not change," Bezos said in a letter addressed to employees and published on the newspaper's website.

"There will of course be change at the Post over the coming years. That's essential and would have happened with or without new ownership," he added. "We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment."

Bezos, who has built Seattle-based Amazon.com into a shopping and online technology force over the last two decades, made a small foray into media earlier this year with a small investment in Internet news site Business Insider.

The Washington Post, home to journalists as the "Watergate" team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, is among the rapidly dwindling number of U.S. newspapers with a profitable business - a function of the rapid migration of readers to Internet and other digital media sources.

Warren Buffett owns a slice of its parent company, Washington Post Co, whose operating income has plummeted almost 40 percent since 2008, to $146.2 million in 2012.

"I doubt it is a financially oriented investment for him as much as a chance to play a more important role as a steward of an important public trust/asset," said James Barksdale, President of Atlanta investment firm Equity Investment Corp.

Barksdale said his firm did not own Washington Post shares because he thought they traded higher than he thought justified, "probably due to the Buffett halo," he added.

Bezos will buy the Post along with other newspaper assets from the Washington Post Co. Amazon.com is to be kept separate from the Post deal, according to the Washington Post.

The deal, which caught many industry watchers by surprise, was arranged in private by Allen & Co. It comes on the heels of near-unprecedented media deal activity this year, with the Globe transaction announced just over the weekend, the Tribune Co hiving off its publishing and broadcasting businesses and the Los Angeles Times reportedly up for sale.

GRAHAM FAMILY RELINQUISH THEIR CLAIM

Washington Post Chairman and Chief Executive Donald E. Graham, whose family owns the paper, explained his decision to part ways with the publication, which will continue to be headed on a daily basis by CEO Katharine Weymouth.

"As the newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we have no answers, Katharine and I began to ask ourselves if our small public company was still the best home for the newspaper. Our revenues had declined seven years in a row," Graham said in his letter to employees.

"Jeff Bezos' proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post."

The transaction covers The Washington Post and other publishing businesses, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.

Bezos is the world's 19th richest person with a fortune of $25.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His other major personal project is called Blue Origin, which aims to be one of the first non-government funded ventures to send people and cargo into space, potentially winning lucrative contracts that were once fulfilled by NASA.

Bezos has already spent millions of dollars on this project, with millions more in the pipeline.

He did not elaborate in great detail on his motivations behind his latest deal on Monday. But in 2009, when asked at the debut of the Kindle 2 whether the electronic-reader could help print media, Bezos said he thought there were "genuine opportunities" to save journalism.

"And we're excited about helping with that," he added, according to the International Herald Tribune.

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Digital company buying US publication Newsweek

NEW YORK CITY - The once-influential US publication Newsweek is being sold to the all-digital news publisher IBT Media, the company said in a statement Saturday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is expected to close "in the coming days," the IBT statement read.

IBT Media is acquiring Newsweek and the publication's online operations from IAC/InterActiveCorp. The purchase does not include The Daily Beast, also owned by IAC.

"We believe in the Newsweek brand and look forward to growing it, fully transformed to the digital age," said Etienne Uzac, co-founder and chief executive officer of IBT Media.

Launched by a former Time magazine reporter in 1933, Newsweek reached a print circulation of three million by the early 1990s and published regional editions around the world.

However the magazine, like other print publications, struggled to cope with the flood of instant and often free news in the digital world and saw its revenue steadily decline.

In 2010 California billionaire Sidney Harman bought Newsweek from The Washington Post Group for a symbolic $1, and took over $40 million in liabilities. Newsweek then merged with The Daily Beast, owned by IAC.

The magazine ended its weekly print edition in December 2012, and IAC announced in May that it would sell Newsweek to concentrate on The Daily Beast.

IBT Media, founded in 2006, operates online news sites that include International Business Times, Medical Daily, Latin Times and iDigitalTimes. They say they have more than 30 million unique visitors to those sites each month.

"We respect the brand's long history of delivering high-quality, impactful journalism and believe this aligns well with IBT Media's culture and mission," Uzac said.

IBT Media co-founder and chief content officer Johnathan Davis said that the Newsweek brand "is strong around the world and we believe there is significant potential to leverage that as well as enhance the editorial offering and continue to modernize the operations and approach."

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Showbiz magazine Daily Variety goes out of print after 80 years

LOS ANGELES, California - The venerable Hollywood trade magazine Daily Variety published its last printed edition on Tuesday, ending an 80-year era by beckoning readers to a recently revamped website and announcing plans to launch a new weekly version of the publication.

The glossy magazine, under new ownership since last autumn, bid farewell to its daily paper-and-ink audience in a front-page inset headlined: "VARIETY ANKLES DAILY PUB HUBBUB," using the Variety-coined verb it typically uses to report departures of studio executives.

"This marks the last official print version of Daily Variety, which reported what happened yesterday," the magazine said. "For news of what happened two minutes ago, keep going to Variety.com, which will be updated constantly."

Long considered the bible of the entertainment industry, Variety said it would merge the editorial content and staff of Daily Variety and its weekly international sister publication, known simply as Variety, to form a new weekly printed edition that will debut on March 26 and publish every Tuesday.

Variety said its new weekly publication and the website would continue the daily magazine's insider emphasis on the business of entertainment, with expanded in-depth coverage.

The move reflects forces shaping much of American print-based journalism, as an increasing number of newspapers have either shifted all their content online or stopped publishing a physical edition on a daily basis.

Variety's website was relaunched on March 1 with a new format eliminating the subscription "pay wall" and providing free access to all its content.

In a column titled: "Change will do you good" and celebrating Variety's new era, Timothy Gray, a veteran senior editor, wrote that dropping the daily to focus on weekly and online products should yield economic benefits and improve the overall quality of stories.

"I'm sure some of you will go through withdrawal symptoms without the print Daily," he wrote. "But it's a new world. You either go with it, or else you mourn the death of vaudeville."

New publisher

The Variety.com overhaul and upcoming launch of a new weekly followed the appointments of a new publisher, Michelle Sobrino, and a trio of new editors-in-chief earlier this year after Variety was sold to online publisher Jay Penske and private equity firm Third Point LLC last October.

At the time, sources said the Penske Media Group and Third Point paid about $25 million to acquire the Variety operation from medical and technical publisher Reed Elsevier.

Variety was founded in 1905 in New York as a weekly publication covering the vaudeville circuit and in 1933 spawned Daily Variety in Hollywood, where it grew into the entertainment industry's leading paper of record.

By newspaper standards, Daily Variety had a relatively modest circulation of 30,000 five years ago, when it was first put up for sale by Reed-Elsevier. But the magazine has long been considered compulsory reading for some of the richest and most powerful people in US media and show business.

The magazine has frequently made cameos of its own in television shows and movies, even popping up in the recent Oscar-winning film "Argo."

Its unique brand of entertainment jargon, known as "slanguage," has even crept into the wider popular vernacular after words like "sitcom" and "soap opera" originated in the pages of Variety.

Less familiar outside Hollywood but ubiquitous in Variety's lexicon are such phrases as "to ankle" as a synonym for "to leave" or "exit," and "boffo" for a modifier describing a robust box-office return or ratings.

The final 32-page issue, including the back cover, devoted a dozen pages to a retrospective of Daily Variety.

A May 3, 1945, top headline read, "Studios Work V-E Day," announcing that studios would go about business as usual instead of closing in celebration of the end of World War Two in Europe. Another headline in the issue read, "Hitler's Exit Puts New Life Onto Frisco Stage."

Daily Variety went on to cover the witch-hunt for communists in Hollywood during the Cold War, upheaval in the entertainment industry during the civil rights movement, and the impact of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America by Islamist militants.

source: abs-cbnnews.com