Vibe, the urban music magazine, is clawing its way back to life. New owners and editors are trying to make the magazine a success reality again, and they are making the web a priority ... which shouldn't be news but is for an ailing print industry.
The new editor-in-chief, Jermaine Hall, told AdAge that "Vibe.com is really the hub," and that everything needs to point back to the online presence. The print publication will be just one part of the Vibe Lifestyle Network, a move we're also seeing with the likes of Rolling Stone, where the website is being brought back into the fold (and may actually get some resources).
But, print does matter to the new crew at Vibe, which is pretty proud of the return issue scheduled for December 8, 2009. It's expected to have more than 40 pages of ads, with Nissan (OTC: NSANY), Sean John, General Motors (NYSE: GRM) and Pepsi (NYSE: PEP) kicking open the coffers to get some play.
Only four issues a year are planned, rather than the 10 sought by the last incarnation of the company, and a smaller circulation of 300,000 will be the starting point -- half the amount the magazine had when it shut down.
Vibe was purchased back in July by private equity firm InterMedia, though other suitors were interested. Controversial urban lifestyle blog MediaTakeOut.com made a play for the publication in the year before it fell apart, but the management at the time resisted Media Take Out founder Fred Mwangaguhunga's revenue sharing offer. He told Reuters over the summer that the deal could have put $1 million a month into Vibe, "but they didn't want it."
I spoke with Fred this morning, and he elaborated, "While Vibe still has a strong brand in the urban genre, this is a challenging time to launch (or re-launch) a print magazine – especially an urban print magazine. Consumers are used to getting urban entertainment content for free on sites like MediaTakeOut.com. It's going to be a very difficult task to convince consumers to pay for the same content."
Now, all that's in the past. Vibe is focused on keeping its costs low and its delivery digital, according to Vibe Lifestyle Network's co-CEO Leonard Burnett Jr.: "Instead of having a website supporting a magazine, we are a digital-influenced business, where the magazine is supporting that."
Whether the comeback is successful could serve as something of a leading indicator for the print business, suggesting whether they can de-emphasize their print publications without leaving that market entirely. With the recent cuts at Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Time Inc., New York Times Co.'s (NYSE: NYT) flagship newspaper, and Conde Nast, among many others, the implications couldn't be more obvious.
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