Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 5:42 am
By: Tonya Pendleton, BlackAmericaWeb.com
When talks between Johnson Publishing Company and Earvin “Magic” Johnson broke down last month, it seemed as though African-Americans shrugged and moved on. There was little concern that Ebony magazine, the bastion of black media in this country, might be headed to an exit after 65 years of continuous publishing.
The celebrity-studded ‘zine that once breathlessly detailed star’s homes and love lives has fallen out of favor in the new media world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Now that Barack Obama is president of the United States, the reigning Miss America is black, both Mo’Nique and Three Six Mafia have won Oscars and a black men have coached their teams to Super Bowl wins, is there still a need for Ebony and its sister publication, Jet?
The answer is yes.
Magazines are undoubtedly in a difficult publishing environment. Who knows how many of them will last? Easy 24-hour access to the Internet has made Web sites the place where most people get their news and entertainment. Even venerated mainstream magazines like Time and Vogue are struggling. But newsstands selling newspapers and magazines with titles for all kinds of interests, both mainstream and niche, still dominate city streets, train stations, airports and malls. There are thousands of titles still in existence, and while many have fallen, new ones are created every year. While newspapers and magazines will never enjoy the media dominance they once had, their day isn’t over yet.
As Vanity Fair’s recent “New Hollywood” issue aptly proved, mainstream publications still consider the mainstream to be its white readers. African-Americans are still marginalized in fashion and beauty, despite the fact that they are one of the largest consumers of fashion and beauty products in the world. There is still a need for a publication that covers issues that specifically pertain to African-Americans, especially since we now have a black president and first lady.
While folks may not notice it now, the departure of Ebony and Jet from our lives would mean an important documentation of black culture would be forever eliminated.
You may be one of the folks who believe the publications to be hopelessly out of touch with today’s reality, something Johnson Publishing has addressed. They have tried to revamp their products with more contemporary covers, more hardcore journalism and a redesign of both titles. Who else gave “Precious” star Gabourey Sibide a cover story? (Not Essence, instead going with much thinner actress Zoe Saldana.) Ebony may seem corny to today’s readers, but if you go through the magazines from the past, now conveniently archived via Google, you see not just movie stars in lavish homes, but a historical document of black history over almost the entire last century. Who else was covering not just Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but Diana Ross, Pam Grier, Sidney Poitier and the Jacksons? Those covers are iconic snapshots of our history.
Ebony has done the right thing in making the magazine more news-oriented and by continuing to have celebrities on their covers. These days, celebrities are what sells, as the fashion magazines realized some years ago when they dropped models from their covers altogether.
Johnson Publishing needs to ramp up their promotion and marketing in a way they’ve never had to do before. You may not read Essence every month, but you know about their annual music festival. Ebony and Jet should use their brand awareness to select some marketing and advertising partners that can set up similar situations for them. The venerable Ebony Fashion Fair, long a staple in the black community, may no longer be the best way to extend their brand, but there are other ways that should be explored.
Their web presence has been expanded, but I’d hazard a guess that most people don’t know that. Ebony and Jet also have a YouTube channel, which I would have never seen had I not been writing this piece. (Note to Ebony brass: Social networking, i.e. Twitter, Facebook and the myriad other tools of social media would help extend your reach.) More than that, Ebony needs to establish itself as a gathering place where black folks talk, gossip, interact and share information about the issues that impact us.
Its writers should be young and old, both informative and controversial, and they need to establish a presence over all media. When is the last time you’ve seen an Ebony writer or editor as a featured expert on television? If both Barack Obama and Sade made it a point to give their first interviews on the eve of their respective projects (Obama as the nation’s first black president; Sade in one of the few interviews she’s given in a 25-year-career – and the only one on this project), then Ebony obviously still holds some weight. But it has to move into a new day.
Upgrade the journalism, expand the Web sites and get the word out. Ebony cannot afford to rest on its laurels. We need its commitment to the black community more than ever.
