Ebony is moving to Los Angeles
5th June 2017 · 0 Comments
By Erick Johnson
Contributing Writer
(Chicago Crusader) — Los Angeles has lured another Black icon away from the Windy City.
The company that now owns Ebony and Jet magazines, recently announced that the editorial teams for both publications will relocate to Tinsel Town.
The move marks another loss for Chicago, which was once a magnet for Black-owned media.
The Chicago Tribune reported that Oprah Winfrey shutdown production at her Harpo Studios, for good, in December 2015.
“Production is migrating to the West Coast, four years behind Winfrey, who left town to start her own cable network, OWN, in 2011,” The Tribune reported.
Television personality Steve Harvey announced last year that he was leaving Chicago to start a new show in Los Angeles.
Motown, the iconic, record label that was once a staple of Detroit’s music scene, bolted for the West Coast decades ago.
Now, Ebony and Jet join that western migration, leaving many in the Black community scratching their heads.
It’s the latest chapter for two, storied publications that, for years, have struggled to find their way in the ever-evolving world of news media.
The founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, John H. Johnson, died in 2005. His wife, Eunice, died in 2010. Their daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, sold Ebony and Jet in 2016 to CVG Group, a Houston private equity firm. Jet ended its print-run in June 2014 and is now only available in digital form.
What many had hoped to be a new chapter for Ebony and Jet is now fading. The latest disappointment came May 5, when the CVG Group announced that Ebony is laying off about 10 of 35 employees, including Editor-In-Chief Kyra Kyles. Tracey Ferguson, the digital editor of Jet, will be responsible for both magazines. Ebony has 1.2 million subscribers.
Johnson Rice will now be CEO and chairman of Johnson Publishing Company, which owns the Fashion Fair cosmetics line that is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. Johnson Rice is the CEO of the CVG Group’s Ebony Media Group, which runs Ebony.
While Ebony will relocate to Los Angeles, Johnson Rice will maintain an office in Chicago and remain CEO of Ebony. Since selling their headquarters in 2010, Johnson Publishing has operated out of the Borg-Warner building at 200 S. Michigan Avenue.
Over the years, to save Ebony, Johnson Rice sold its landmark headquarters, shuttered the print edition of Jet magazine and then sold Ebony and Jet to the CVG Group, a small private firm with little or no experience in media or magazine publishing. All along, Johnson Publishing trumpeted these moves as a step forward, but to many professionals and former Ebony employees, they were all mistakes and disturbing signs of an empire in decline.
Now, there are concerns that the latest move to relocate Ebony some 2,000 miles away from its birthplace will deliver the final blow to the publication that, for decades, was one of the few magazines that told the story of Black life and culture.
This article originally published in the June 5, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
