Pour one out for Vibe magazine

July 1, 11:17 AMChicago Music Scene ExaminerJeff Fuldauer

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Vibe, a magazine that once served among the most popular of music news periodicals, is closing immediately according to a spokeswoman for the publication.

The news spread early Tuesday by the Web site dailyfinance.com and quickly circulated to other music and media news sites. Tracy Nguyen, speaking on behalf of Vibe, said the magazine staff was formally apprised of the situation in a meeting after the news broke online. Nguyen said the number of job cuts resulting from the closure were unknown at this time.

Vibe’s deluge leaves only two large-circulation hip-hop and R&B music magazines on the shelves, XXL and The Source. Like so many other print publications, The Source has also experienced financial tribulations with the magazine filling for bankruptcy and materializing with a redeveloped management last year.

In an email to Vibe staff members indicating the closure, Steve Aaron, President of the Vibe Media Group, wrote that the company did everything possible to find additional financers and “to restructure the huge debt on our small company,” and that ceasing production was a last resort.

“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,” Aaron said in his memo.

Mastermind producer and musicion, Quincy Jones, and the Time Warner Inc. developed Vibe magazine in 1992. A private equity firm, The Wicks Group, bought the publication in 2006 when Vibe was reporting a circulation of over 800,000 in the second half of last year. But as so many similar publications have suffered from advertising rates that have nosedived, Vibe quickly fell on hard times.

Recently, Rolling Stone magazine redesigned their publication to cut costs, and Playboy has seen a precipitous fall, closing their New York office and laying off members of the Chicago staff in efforts to merge the two branches.