![]() ![]() It seems to be part of a larger westward media migration - Playboy magazine also departed Chicago in 2012. The Chicago Crusader’s Erick Johnson pointed out that Ebony is only the latest prominent African American-owned media company to leave the city in recent years, following the shutdown of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios in 2015, and the departure of Steve Harvey’s show last year. While editorial is moving, Ebony Media CEO Linda Johnson Rice will continue to work out of Chicago. ![]() As Channick notes, since its founding by John Johnson in 1945, Ebony has “documented and shaped African-American culture… coming of age as it reported from the front lines of the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s in powerful photos and prose.” Ten of thirty-five employees are being laid off as Ebony consolidates editorial operations with JET, which ceased print publication last year, though there’s been talk of relaunching a quarterly print edition. ![]() It’s of course a sad turn of events for the city of Chicago. Since the buyout, Ebony has also reportedly faced a number of new setbacks, including delayed deliveries and problems paying freelancers. The move, reported earlier this month by the Chicago Tribune’s Robert Channick, comes just a year after the magazine’s family-owned founding publisher, Johnson Publishing, sold Ebony and its sister publication, JET, to Texas private equity firm CVG Group, which has apparently been unable to reverse a trend of dwindling sales. The news that Ebony magazine is cutting staff and relocating its office from Chicago to Los Angeles has locals mourning the end of an era. Those who don’t want to transition to digital will be given its sister title, Ebony.Ebony magazine is leaving Chicago after a seventy-two-year run » MobyLivesĮbony magazine is leaving Chicago after a seventy-two-year run The app will be available on all tablet devices and mobile platforms with a $20 annual subscription price. We are not saying goodbye to Jet, we are embracing the future as my father did in 1951 and taking it to the next level.”ĭesirée Rogers, CEO since 2010, said the new weekly digital magazine app will leverage a variety of storytelling tactics, including video interviews, enhanced digital maps, 3D charts and photography from the JPC archives. “He could not have spoken more relevant words today. There is more news and far less time to read it,’ ” said Linda Johnson Rice, chairwoman of Johnson Publishing Co. “Almost 63 years ago, my father, John Johnson, named the publication Jet because, as he said in the first issue, ‘In the world today, everything is moving faster. Jet has a circulation of 720,000, flat from a year prior. The magazine shifted from weekly to every-third-week publication in February 2013 in the face of rising postage and printing costs. One of its most galvanizing moments was its decision to run photos of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy infamously murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. Through the 1950s and ’60s, it pioneered coverage of the early civil rights struggle in a digest-size magazine that sold for only 15 cents. The magazine, launched 63 years ago by John Johnson, was billed originally as “The Weekly Negro News Magazine.” Jet, the nation’s third-largest magazine aimed at an African-American audience, is going from an every-third-week print edition to digital only.
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