King Magazine loses the fight to bloggers..which urban magazine is next?
By Abba A. Onyeani
Ceo-Theblackurbantimes.com
The once mighty King magazine, run by Datwan Thomas was one of my favorites. As a black man, I often was disappointed with the lack of magazines that catered to me. King gave me what was missing;women,fashion,cars,clothes, and advice from the black man's perspective. King drew me in like bees to honey with its risque photos of eye candy like the classic pics of Buffy the body,Melissa Ford, and Ice-T's wife Coco. You cannot deny the significance of this loss.
Harris publications, who owns XXL, King, and others might want to rethink their urban media publication strategy.Bloggers are winning hands down. Sites like Dimewars.com, agiantsfanrant.com, and others are reaching out to the urban male demographic with videos, real-time updates, and more eye candy than ever. The situation for urban magazines overall might be dire. If mediatakeout.com is boasting millions of viewers per month with stories for free, why would I need to buy The Source,XXL, Vibe, or any other urban magazines for that matter?
The 21st century is here. When I recently picked up *******, all of stories were old and the pics seemed dated. I had read all of the stories online already. Urban publications need to use the internet like never before and they might want to think about hiring urban bloggers and consultants for their own web properties. The internet is in real time now and President Obama tweets his messages to the nation. The only way urban publications will survive is by making their websites intriguing and interactive with enough media on there to hold my interest.Now I'm not saying to stop buying historic publications like black-owned Ebony, Essence, Smooth, or others. We are all trying to make it in this small urban media industry. All I'm saying is that they need to get their web game in check.
Urban magazines may keep killing trees and try to survive the death of print. I advise finding a web strategy that will keep their loyal readers. If not they might lose their audience that will log on and get the latest urban news and gossip for free online.
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