Last week it was announced in the New York Times that Savoy, Honey, and Heart and Soul would be shut down. While I liked Honey (kind of a hip-hopped out Essence), I thought Savoy was horrible. It was bad on its own terms, and in no way could it hold the jock strap of its predecessor, Emerge. I'm glad it is gone, and knew this moment was coming. If anything, the story of Emerge and Savoy tells us about the pitfalls associated with large scale black capitalism and black power.
First a bit of history is in order.
Emerge magazine was founded in 1989 as an attempt to deliver a hard hitting black-centered newsmagazine to the homes of black folk. Though there were some problems (a few of my colleagues criticized Emerge for their hiring practices, and some for its content as well), for my money Emerge was the best thing since Black World (a seventies attempt to do the same thing). George Curry's covers (and stories) about Clarence Thomas were legend. And Emerge's cover article about Kemba Smith (who was originally sent to prison for 25 years for her peripheral role in a drug deal involving small amounts of crack cocaine) arguably played an important role in the commutation of her sentence by President Clinton. It wasn't like Emerge didn't have a faithful consumer base--the magazine had a circulation of 150,000 which rates favorably in comparison to other news magazines--but was losing money at the rate of 1 million/year. So after eleven years, Bob Johnson cut his losses, shutting Emerge down and bringing in Keith Clinkscales (formerly associated with Vibe) to ring in a new era.
Keith's response to Emerge? Savoy.
Reading Savoy was like watching a train wreck. Instead of hard hitting articles about how the Contract With America was a Contract ON black folk, we got....Tom Joyner butt nekkid in the American flag. (I'm not making this up.) Clinkscales vision of Savoy was simple--neuter the political content, and make it a lifestyle magazine for middle to upper-income African Americans. Have puff pieces about pop stars, and fill the rest with new age self-help mantras.
Now to be fair Clinkscales had a plan that made sense. The reason that Emerge lost money was NOT because "black people didn't support it" (could we toss that tired phrase out?!?) but because the way magazines make money is ADVERTISING REVENUE. Circulation doesn't mean DIDDLY--except for the identification of prominent niche markets for advertisers. Clinkscale believed that advertisers didn't support Emerge because of its content. Create a magazine with different content but geared to the upper-income black market and ad revenue should POUR in right?
Nope. Though advertising execs will create niches where they didn't exist before and shill all sorts of products (does the phrase "metrosexual" ring a bell?), there are some niches that will continue to be woefully underserved. The sophisticated black market is most likely not deemed large enough to compete for or to sell to (as an entity in and of itself) with the exception of donations to super promoters.
This is key. For all the talk about starting our own and supporting our own, when we are dealing with large scale corporate enterprises (as opposed to regional or local ones) it is very very difficult to promote the old school values of integrity and pride, unless we're talking about Kwanzaa Cadillac commercials. We supported Emerge as much as our counterparts supported Time or US News and World Report, but because advertisers run the magazine business we were simply out of luck.
The more I think about it, the more I think that the future lies in cell-networks and regional ties, at a political, economic, and cultural level.
Posted by at December 2, 2003 09:12 AM | TrackBackBut what is key here is that even when they changed the format to a non-issue oriented one, they still fell.
Posted by: Lester Spence at December 2, 2003 07:59 PMLKS,once again you on the $,what is the corporate motivation;they already believe that you don't have to service or cator to the Black market,i.e.Blacks will consume and not produce ,we have to cut our teeth locally then use the result to catapult nationally.
Posted by: tootsie at December 3, 2003 10:42 AM
Issues oriented publications only work as loss leaders for think-tanks, not as commercial venues. The American Spectator doesn't have the circulation to attract the advertisers it would need to survive as a standalone entity either.
Posted by: P6 at December 2, 2003 05:22 PM