Potential Sale Of Ebony Breeds Anger
From Black America Web:
Is Ebony magazine for sale? And is the legendary black-owned publication on the verge of being purchased by a white media company?
Business insiders say that Ebony, the 64-year-old black-oriented magazine founded by John H. Johnson in 1945, may be looking for a buyer – and soon.
RELATED: Report: Ebony Magazine Up For Sale
“Now it appears Johnson Publishing’s chairman and CEO, Linda Johnson Rice, has reached what must have been an agonizing decision: Johnson Publishing is seeking a buyer or investor for its flagship publication, Ebony, in an effort aimed at securing the survival of the nation’s oldest magazine devoted to African-American life,” Newsweek reported in last week’s edition.
Newsweek said that Rice has contacted Time Inc. and Viacom about a possible purchase of Ebony or a partnership. Time Inc. bought Essence magazine – a publication for black women – in 2000. Viacom purchased BET in 2000.
A source familiar with Ebony’s financial difficulties confirmed for BlackAmericaWeb.com that the magazine is being shopped to several potential buyers.
Executives with Ebony said the magazine is considering a myriad of possibilities.
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“As we’ve indicated previously, we are exploring a range of options to support our core media business. However, we are not in discussions with Time Inc. and Viacom,” Ebony said in a statement sent to BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Clem Richardson, a columnist with The New York Daily News, said he finds the prospect of Ebony and Jet no longer being black-owned both angering and frightening.
“I get angry because the company’s financial trouble is more testimony to the notion that African-Americans can’t be fiscally viable, despite our numbers, without white support,” Richardson told BlackAmericaWeb.com Tuesday.
“And I get frightened because Ebony has long shown its readers black Americans at our best, and in showing that, helped us through our worse,” he said.
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Comments
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missstrings4310-6-2009 2:42 pm
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jazzwatch10-5-2009 2:05 am
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Robert96710-4-2009 2:58 pm
« Previous 1 2It’s pretty interesting how everything else in the US can change but a black womans magazine such as Ebony can not go through the same motions and emotions. I say this with an attitude because society today is dating every day and at an increasing rate out of our own races and yet a buy out of a magazine (yes I know the stature of it)becomes what we as a society are trying to portray as not as or in this case, more important. Hence, black men are dating out of their race (white and other than black)woman and white men are dating (black woman and other than white) woman and so with that…why is it that our mental attitudes and aptitude is any different here. If a white or other race owns a black magazine, all we are going to upgrade to (laughing) is what we as a society has put out here..and that being a mixed, bi-racial magazine with woman of all creeds, colors and walks of life in it. It’s quite funny right now because that IS where I society has taken it.
If Ebony goes for sale, maybe a rich celebrity (like Cosby, Oprah. Jordon) should buy it…….
I have to agree with Streetdaze on this.