Vibe Launches “Resurrection” Issue, Relaunches Web Site

Inaugural issue under new ownership hits newsstands on Dec. 15.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Six months after folding and four months after being acquired by Uptown Media Group, hip-hop magazine Vibe is returning to the newsstands.

Vibe Lifestyle Network, the new parent company of Vibe Magazine and Vibe.com, announced this week that the inaugural “resurrection” issue of Vibe will be available on Dec. 15 and will feature two different covers: one with R&B singer Chris Brown and the other with singer/rapper/actor Drake. The title will go quarterly in 2010 and have a circulation of 300,000. [At the time it folded, it had an average paid circulation of 600,000.] Newsstand copies are priced at $4.99. A subscription model for the title is still under development.

In addition to improved paper and increased size, the new version of Vibe will also feature broadened and expanded content, according to editor-in-chief Jermaine Hall, who previously served as Webmaster of Vibe from 1997–1999.

“When Vibe first started, it was intended to be a music magazine that focused on the culture and lifestyle of hip-hop, but it got a little skinny towards the very end,” he told AD. “It became more of a music magazine that focused heavily on hip-hop. My mission is to broaden the scope and make sure that other genres and fringe acts that aren’t currently on readers’ radars get coverage.”

Hall added that the look of the magazine is more readable and easy on the eye. “I’m a big fan of white space,” he said. “I wanted the design to be more modern, open and easy to digest so that an article, for example, can have 6,000 words and not even look like it.”

While previous versions of Vibe were targeted towards males, about 46 percent of its readers were female. Hall said that with the new version, he wants to raise the percentage of male readers a bit. “I’d like to have it be 55 percent male and 45 percent female, but do it in a way that won’t alienate our female readers,” he said.

When asked what the company is doing to woo previous Vibe subscribers back to the fold, Hall said not too much. "We feel like Vibe readers are very loyal and they'll be glad to see it back," he said. "We feel that there's this gaping hole in the market that bringing Vibe back can fill."

Vibe.com Relaunch

Along with the resurrection of the print magazine, Vibe Lifestyle Network has also given Vibe.com a new look that will strengthen the connection between the two products.

“The business model has definitely changed,” Hall said. “Whereas before the magazine kind of powered everything, this time around the site will actually be the hub. Everything needs to go back to Vibe.com.”

The company’s goal is to offer readers a completely different experience on the Web site than from the magazine while maintaining the synergy between the two. For example, if a subscriber were reading the feature on Chris Brown, they would then be prompted to go online and view photo galleries and behind-the-scenes footage associated with the feature. “We want to create a 360-degree experience for our readers,” Hall said.

In addition to Vibe.com, the Vibe Lifestyle Network has 25+ other sites, including Allhiphop.com, SingersRoom.com, AmberMag.com and TheLoop21.com, which pulls in a total of 19 million unique visitors each month. Each of these properties, Hall said, are going to feed off of each other based on an in-house term called “C.A.N.,” which stands for curate, aggregate and narrate.

“By curate, we mean that we want to paint a great picture with our content for everyone that come to our sites,” he said. “We want to aggregate—meaning that if the partner sites have content that’s worthy, we’ll bring that to the forefront at Vibe.com. And by narrate, we mean making sure that all of our original content remains in the forefront.”

The company is also working on getting readers more involved with the content on Vibe.com by voting for their favorite articles and submitting their own content. “It’s kind of showing that we’re more about being a democracy rather than a dictatorship,” Hall said.

Hall added that a slew of Vibe-branded products are forthcoming in 2010, including an iPhone app, TV programming and an online radio station.

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