By Charing Ball
The end of an almost 70-year legacy is upon us as the last bastion of black-owned media space known as the Johnson Publishing Company, owner of Ebony and Jet magazines, will now only be partly black-owned.
Johnson Publishing announced last week that JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s special investments group has acquired a “substantial” minority stake in the company. It is the first time in the company’s history that it will not be fully family-owned. No one should really be too surprised by the announcement considering that Johnson Publishing has been struggling in recent years with declining circulation and advertising sales. At one time Ebony and Jet averaged respectively, 1,294,824 and 900,000 in circulation. But by the end of 2010 the circulation numbers dropped to 997,173 and 703,944. Moreover, Johnson has seen a substantial revenue-drop from more than $472 million to $120 million.
The black-owned publishing company has been trying to turn itself around with structural changes such as a workforce reduction, the sale of the building that served as the company’s headquarters for four decades and the hiring of Desiree Rogers, former White House social secretary, as its CEO. And according to Richard Prince’s Journal-ism, while it has yet to be revealed how much stake JPMorgan will gain in the acquisition, Johnson is citing that it is enough to “[give] us the capital to move forward with the plans we’ve been working on.” Those plans include “rebranding” Ebony and Jet, remaking a digital platform for both publications and marketing Fashion Fair cosmetics more effectively.
It may feel like a half-mast day for some in the media world, however perhaps this investment will give Johnson Publishing the financial boost needed to navigate through the ever-changing and evolving black aesthetic. The internet has become a black hole, gobbling up what’s left of print publications. Likewise, most black readers who continue to subscribe, do so out of loyalty or some sort of romanticized sentiment of what they believed the publications stands for. Seriously, when was the last time you quoted or referenced an article in Ebony? Matter of fact, when was the last time, you actually read Jet? The reality is that the modern day black family hasn’t been supporting either publications they way that we should. And there is a reason behind that.
The most obvious, as stated by Rogers, is Johnson’s failure to keep up with the digital revolution. As technology becomes more commonplace, much in the way that radio and television used to be, the need for information on demand has outstripped the company’s capacity to deliver content on a monthly (and in the case of Jet, weekly) basis. But it goes deeper than that. Even if the Johnson Publishing could beef up its digital image, the content has to match and that is something both publications had been neglecting for years.
It was E. Franklin Frazier, author of Black Bourgeoisie, who first took to task Ebony, Jet and a slew of other black publication during the 1960s for what he called a fixation on representing “essentially the interests and outlook of the black bourgeoisie.” In the chapter called a The Negro Press and Wish Fulfillment Frazier writes, “the Negro press is not concerned with broader social and economic values. It will give prominence with avowed or unavowed approval to any recognition that given the Negro by any organization in the United States so long as there is no implication of racial inferiority.”
Unfortunately, not much has changed since Frazier gave his harsh critique of either publication. Ebony continues to be the magazine for achievements of middle-class, while Jet is the magazine of black social society. Both publications deal with a faux sense of “race pride” where conspicuous consumption is framed as the symbol of success for today’s modern black family. Neither of them, in my opinion, deals truthfully with the state of blacks today, either politically or socially – especially if those blacks happen to be on the fringes of respectable Negro standards. In my opinion it has also been Johnson publications’ anti-intellectualism and its opposition to radicalism, which continuously finds itself missing the boat on various movements toward social justice.
While the main crux of their future goals center around resources to expand in digital media, it is my hope that Johnson puts more emphasis on the character of its content. I mean, with so many pressing issues within the African American community, do we really need a digital page devouted to Shaun Robinson’s Summer Soiree? And if it doesn’t make any content changes and continues to be the same ole’ bougie Ebony/Jet, catering only to the self-importance of the black elite, than we have to ask ourselves truthfully, what will we really be losing?
Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.
