Harsh 'Vibe': Hip-Hop Mag Shuttered, Again

Spin Media is shuttering Vibe magazine’s print edition, marking the second time the hip-hop title has ceased publication in five years. The Vibe Web site will continue operating. Spin Media is also laying off 19 staffers who worked on the magazine, mostly in the video, photo, and sales departments, according to Capital New York, which first reported the news.

Founded in 1992 by Quincy Jones in partnership with Time Inc., Vibe at one time had a print circulation of over 800,000 but declined to less than half this volume as readers migrated to the Internet. The magazine also changed hands a number of times. In 1996, it was acquired by former Time exec Robert Miller, who then acquired Spin magazine the following year and formed the Miller Publishing Group.

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In 2006, MPG sold Vibe to The Wicks Group, a private equity firm with holdings in the media industry, which shuttered the magazine for the first time in 2009 after its ad pages tumbled 36% in just three years, from 1,242 in 2005 to 792 in 2008. The magazine got a new lease on life in August 2009, when Wicks sold it to InterMedia Partners (which had previously invested $6 million in 2007) in partnership with Blackrock Capital and Uptown Media Group.

The partners resurrected Vibe as a quarterly publication, and in February 2011 the magazine came under the control of Yucaipa Companies, the holding company of billionaire Ron Burkle, who invested in the publication along with Magic Johnson. Yucaipa, in turn, sold Vibe to Spin Media (formerly Buzz Media), publisher of online properties such as Stereogum, Celebuzz and The Frisky, in April of last year.

Spin Media initially said it planned to transition the title to online-only publication, as it had with Spin following that earlier acquisition -- but then apparently thought better of it, opting to maintain the quarterly publication schedule until last week’s announcement issuing the coup de grace.

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