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JET MAGAZINE ENDING PRINT PUBLICATION (1995 hits)

CHICAGO--Jet magazine, the digest-sized publication that has been a staple among African-American readers for 63 years, is getting out of the print business.

Johnson Publishing announced Wednesday that Jet, which has a circulation of more than 700,000, will transition to a digital-only format in June.

“The print version is going away, but the franchise is not going away,” said Desiree Rogers, CEO of Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Company.

The new app, which will be available for tablets and all mobile devices, will be published weekly, and will update breaking news daily. It will include video interviews, 3-D charts and archival photos, in addition the content available in the print edition.

The third-largest circulation magazine in the African-American market, Jet reduced publication frequency from weekly to roughly every three weeks in recent years. Last summer, Jet went through a major redesign, with more service-oriented stories, bigger photos, more graphics and a new website.

The changes were not enough to stave off the transition to digital, according to Rogers.

"We were not able to deliver and to print a weekly magazine that was cost-effective,” Rogers said. “Over the past few years we tried to figure out how do we get back to the Jet that everyone had growing up, where they got information more readily. We made the decision that this was a great opportunity to move Jet to a digital platform."

Published 20 times a year, Jet has a total average circulation of 720,000, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

Subscribers pay $20 per year for the print edition and the current digital version. Those subscribers will receive instructions on how to get the new app and continue receiving Jet. Print subscribers that don’t choose to go with the digital Jet, will have the option to convert their subscriptions to sister publication, Ebony, according to Rogers.

There are about 10,000 digital-only subscribers to Jet, Rogers said. Transitioning Jet’s die-hard print readers to digital may be no easy task.

“We’ve got to walk our readers through this, and we’ve got to mourn that it’s not in the same format,” Rogers said. “But at the same time, once they see it, once they get familiar with it, they’re going to love it.”

One person who has already opted for the magazine switch is Mitzi Miller, the former editor of Jet who was named editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine last month. Kyra Kyles, formerly a senior editor of Jet magazine and digital managing editor of Jet’s website, has been named digital editorial director of Jet online.

Ebony, the largest circulation magazine among African Americans, recently went through a cover-to-cover redesign of its own. The 68-year-old Ebony lifestyle magazine has a total average circulation of 1.29 million, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

Rogers said Ebony is “doing fine” in print and online, and that there are no plans to convert it to a digital-only platform.

“I think there are certain formats that work really well in a print publication,” Rogers said. "Ebony is very different from Jet.”

Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Wednesday, May 7th 2014 at 11:46AM
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Jet magazine, black grandmas' favorite, to go all digital
By Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
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on May 07, 2014 at 1:51 PM, updated May 07, 2014 at 1:54 PM

Years ago, while sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of black people my age, I presented them all with a question: On what page does Jet Magazine's "Beauty of the Week" appear? Even the folks who didn't know the answer had what might be called a right-on response. "It runs after that photo of Magic Johnson," one guy said. Ha! Ha! I'd have thought he'd have said the swimsuit-clad woman was shown somewhere near the advertisement for Lerone Bennet Jr.'s book "Before the Mayflower."

As an employee of a media company that is now more digitally focused, I can't say I was surprised Wednesday to learn that the 63-year-old news magazine will no longer be printed. Desiree Rogers, the New Orleans-born CEO of Johnson Publishing Company, is quoted in the Chicago Tribune saying, "The print version is going away, but the franchise is not going away."

Maybe because I haven't been a regular visitor to beauty shops since my mama dragged me with her as she got her hair fixed, I didn't know that the magazine's frequency had already diminished. It was published weekly, but more recently it was being published every three weeks.

"We were not able to deliver and to print a weekly magazine that was cost-effective," Rogers said Wednesday. She said officials at the company had been trying to figure out how to produce "the Jet that everyone had growing up." That's when the call was made: "We made the decision that this was a great opportunity to move Jet to a digital platform."

Just a few days ago I was looking for the most popular acts in black music from fifty years ago. I thought, "Jet would have printed that!" and I found an online treasure trove of almost all the issues of the magazine. I started with the Jan. 2, 1964 edition, and I was so fascinated by it, that I was distracted from my original plan to consult many magazines and collect as much music chart data as I could.

That issue reports a ruling from a federal judge in New York that Martin Luther King Jr. owned the copyright to the speech he delivered at 1963's March on Washington. The ruling was a blow to two record companies that wanted to sell "I Have a Dream."

There was a story about the single Negro on the Houston (Tex.) school board. That member, Hattie H. White, got into a set-to with two other members on the board after she argued that Houston students had felt OK applauding John F. Kennedy's assassination because board members had helped foment anti-government feelings.

There was a report in the back of the magazine about the death of Queen of the Blues, Dinah Washington. That story included memorable quotes from Washington including this laugher about Rock and Roll: "I'm glad that plague is over."

One story in the front of the magazine made me realize that we're having some of the same arguments in 2014 that folks were having in 1964. S.B. Fuller, a millionaire who had made his fortune selling cosmetics, had just told a national manufacturer's group that Negroes, his people, "lack initiative, courage, integrity, loyalty and wisdom." Fuller, who was born in Ouachita Parish, also said that the Negro wrongly "believes there is a racial barrier in America which keeps him from success."

There are people today who don't think there are any racial barriers in America that impede success, but Fuller was making his comments soon after Martin Luther King and hundreds of thousands had marched on Washington to demand that those barriers had been torn down. He made those comments after four girls were blown up by the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham. Within a year of Fuller's remarks the bodies of three civil rights workers were dug out of an earthen dam in Philadelphia, Miss.

That 1964 Jet report was focused on NAACP president Roy Wilkins' response to Fuller. American Negroes, Wilkins said, "have shown courage and persistence and determination against the kind of odds no gambler would accept. They have fought and overcome handicaps that no men should be called to face."

The argument Fuller and Wilkins were having continues today. Let's hope the publication that reported that argument continues, too.
Saturday, May 24th 2014 at 2:32PM
Siebra Muhammad