Quincy Jones Rumored to Buy The Failed Publication

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Vibe, a popular-music magazine, is closing immediately, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The decision leaves two major magazines, The Source and XXL, focusing on hip-hop or R&B. The Source has had its own troubles, going through a bankruptcy and emerging under new ownership last year. A rock-focused magazine, Blender, folded last year. The musician Quincy Jones and Time Warner created Vibe in 1992. The Wicks Group, a private equity firm, bought it in 2006. Vibe reported circulation of 818,000 in the second half of last year, a healthy figure, but like most magazines, it suffered from falling advertising.

Later in the day, Vibe founder Quincy Jones said, “I’m trying to buy my magazine back now,” according to Adrienne Samuels Gibbs of Ebony magazine.

“Jones told EbonyJet.com just moments ago during a telephone call to Jones’ London abode”‘ that, “They just messed my magazine all up, but I’m gonna get it back. You better believe it, I’m'a take it online because print and all that stuff is over,” Gibbs wrote.

“It is with a heavy heart that I share some tough news, VMG is closing down effective today, June 30 due to lack of additional financial investments,” Aaron told staffers in a memo.

Vibe’s current issue.”Unfortunately, over the last several months, a confluence of events has obviously posed VMG to exceedingly serious challenges.

“The collapse of the capital markets has impacted us greatly. Over the past several months, we have actively pursued investment resources while working intensively with our bank to find a solution. But the deal market right now remains very poor and at the end of the day, the lack of investment resources to restructure the huge debt on our small company has made this outcome become a reality.

“The print advertising collapse hit VIBE hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business. It’s also unfortunate that in a recession many companies reduce the multi-cultural campaigns. These facts, coupled with the continuing decline of the music industry not to mention the newsstand wholesaler consolidation in early 2009 all negatively impacted our business in a significant way.

“The relentless economic situation has depressed our growth initiatives on the digital front. To be clear, VMG has made significant improvement in this part of our business, but not at the accelerated pace required to offset the devastating effects of the most severe recession in our lifetime and the accompanying print losses.”

Danyel Smith, former chief content officer of Vibe Media Group and editor in chief of Vibe, issued this statement:

“On behalf [of] the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It’s a tragic week overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine’s sixteenth anniversary, it’s a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.”

Jones, the multifaceted musician, founded Vibe in 1993. The first issue featured the rapper then known as Snoop Doggy Dogg, now Snoop Dogg.

Critics applauded.

“Its hip yet clean design and sharp eye for music, cultural-trend reporting and political commentary actually makes it seem like a black-oriented version of Spin,” Marty Hughley wrote in the Portland Oregonian. “And the current issue includes excellent writing from the versatile critics Greg Tate and Nelson George, senior writer (and former Spin contributor) Scott Poulson-Bryant and others. Subjects range from a tribute to the late jazz composer Sun Ra to women in reggae to aesthetic shifts in the world of skateboarding.”

“Vibe enjoyed significant success in the late ’90s and early part of this decade as hip hop and R&B became the nation’s predominant forms of pop music,” wrote Jeff Bercovici of AOL’s dailyfinance.com, who was apparently the first to break the story Tuesday.

“But in recent years the title has fallen on hard times under its new owner, the Wicks Group, which bought it in 2006. In February, it reduced its circulation and publishing frequency, cut salaries and moved employees to a four-day workweek to save money.”

“Jones says that all publications must figure out how to live online,” Gibbs wrote for ebonyjet.com. “That’s where he’s going to take Vibe once he recovers from the death of his friend and protégé Michael Jackson. “‘We gotta get into the 21st century you know,’ Jones said. ‘Print and all that stuff is over, we gotta remember that. The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Post Intelligencer. The Miami Herald. They’re over the same way as the record business. We have got to get into this century.’”

Vibe reported a circulation of 817,825 as of Dec. 31, down from 894,951 the previous year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

And while the magazine was once thick with ads, advertising dollars were down 15.2 percent from the year previous, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures from January.

On Gawker.com, Hamilton Nolan laid out the recent carnage:

“The recent dead include Radio and Records, Performing Songwriter, and Blender,” he wrote.

“Vibe probably had the most demographically diverse readership of any major music magazine. Now, the hip hop magazine world is ruled by the shaky Source and XXL, with strong online competition; the trade music sector is still topped by Billboard, incredibly shaky as well; the pop music mag sector is ruled by Rolling Stone, which is a shell of its former self; and Spin, Fader, Paste, and everyone else are just trying to protect their own audiences from the free, and many times much better, online intruders. Hard times.”

This story is filed under: Arts & Culture

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