The Wall of Magazine Covers (this was only some of the many)
Taken at The old Vibe office location 215 Lexington AveA mixture of thoughts filled through me when I heard VIBE was closing its doors. First, I was in disbelief, thinking it was a rumor. The magazine industry along with newspapers has been suffering for awhile and while they may have been hit as well, I couldn't fathom a world without the magazine I'd been reading for nearly ten years. I recently had visited the new office in May while conducting an interview for an upcoming issue, learned about their new magazine, The Most Mag! and saw many familiar faces - happy many of them remembered me.
While the lives of those on staff are the most dramatically impacted by this sad news, it also hit me hard as a former intern of the publication (and several other former interns who have twittered about it or expressed sadness). I can recall being ecstatic that a magazine I'd been reading avidly since 13 would even pick me to be a fly on their wall as an intern but I was picked for Fall 2007. With very few classes that semester and on the brink of graduating it was the perfect ending to my time at Kean University. We were Shirea Carroll's first team of interns and were nervous but still eager to fulfill part of our dream of becoming music journalists. The semester was filled with hard work, lots of lessons, new opportunities and of course some mistakes, but it made us all stronger in the end and sad to leave the guidance of our intern coordinator Shirea and positive career model that Danyel Smith gave off with her mounts of success and always wise words of encouragement and well wishes. We also were surrounded by many other creative great minds on staff that influenced many of us and helped us cultivate our raw talent.
Besides the memories I'm sure many people have whether they worked there, used to worked there, freelanced, or just remember scooping a copy every week is the big question involving media. In my mind if the biggest, most popular urban magazine can fall, who is next?
It's like if you have a favorite table in your house that is so sturdy and one day a leg breaks off. If that can break, then there may not be much hope for anything else in the house. Amidst all the ominous news with the still dysfunctional economy, celebrity deaths, this was just the straw that has broken the camel's back for me.
As Danyel Smith once said on her podcast, Take it Personal that she does weekly with her husband, Elliot Wilson of Rap Radar and former Editor-in-Chief of XXL about the crumbling of print media she addressed journalistic integrity and who can you trust in media. Yes, we have news, gossip and blog sites, but many of those people are not journalists. Not to water down any passion they may have for media or entertainment, but there is a difference between someone with an interest and someone with a keen understanding of how to reach an audience, be biased at times and how to disagree with something without being disrespectful. Yes, journalists do blog, and some bloggers are journalists, but as great as the Internet is, anyone can hop on and pretend to be an expert.
The saddening part is that I've seen people comment on gossip and blog sites talking trash about certain magazines and hyping up gossip sites for their fast and easy news on celebrities. They often complain about magazines' content, the artists they cover and that the magazines are much thinner than before. Some of which may be true. However, do these people think that they may be part of the problem? The lower the sales the less money to fill it with content and the magazine has to make their money somehow so yes, it may be more ads. As far as the artists covered? Blame it on the audience, not the alcohol.
At the end of the day who is accountable? Do most of these sites have the artist or craft in mind or just a juicy story; sadly the later is most often the case. Do they actually choose their words wisely or just want to insult whatever or whoever they are talking about? Is there structure? Are they unbiased? Not to say none of these popular sites check their sources or that I don't go on these sites daily, but unlike the work that goes into fact checking magazines and reputable web sites anyone can feign it. I guess as someone who went to college to study journalism and at one point interned for Vibe and AllHipHop.com the idea of journalism is personal to me although I never had the opportunity to be a full-fledged journalist on a staff. All of this is constant reminder how our society is too obsessed with instant gratification only to be left empty handed at the end.
It's sad to see a staple in entertainment industry leave, but I wish everyone luck and show love top my FA '07 intern crew, Miryam, Claire, Guerdley, Emmanuel, Desiree, Natalie and Sabrina.
Here's a few covers: the first issue I helped work on as an intern, an issue I contributed to, and a few random others
