Vibe’s Retrenchment Opportunity To Pull In Readers Online

Vibe magazine recently announced a restructuring in response to two years straight of nearly 20% drop in ad pages.  Vibe’s senior management took more creative measures than cutting staff and reducing editorial, the two most common knee-jerk reactions taken by its peers.  Whether intentional or not, the restructuring puts Vibe in the position to use all of its print publications to extend its brand and grow its audience across its various web platforms.

Vibe made all the right moves to preserve the print publication, including reducing circulation from 800,000 to 600,000.  Printing more copies than can be supported by ad dollars, newsstand purchases, and subscriptions would only lead to hemmorhaging money and cutting corners elsewhere.  Vibe also deserves kudos for taking creative measures to retain its staff.  Rather than simply reducing headcount and crushing moral and productivity in the process, Vibe reduced the work week to four days and lowered salary by 10% – 15%.  Staff gets to keep their jobs and Vibe still can produce the same quality content its readers love the magazine for.

Vibe will also will release the previously shuttered sister publication Vibe Vixen on an occasional basis, and has been preparing to relaunch vibevixen.com.  Vibe is also publishing another special edition publication, Vibe Prodigy, a parenting magazine that takes advantage of a niche market without any formidable competition in sight.  It would be wise to for Vibe to maintain that audience online with a separate website or as a channel or blog on vibe.com or vibevixen.com.

The only real misstep Vibe seems to have made in its restructuring is introducing a bi-annual celebrity tabloid disributed via newstand only bi-annually.  The internet has nearly made the relevance of tabloid and gossip print publications.  By the time info reaches the newsstand, it has already ran up and down the grapevine of the web, a medium that allows he-said/she-heard to become common knowledge among millions within the hour.   It could work if Vibe created a separate channel or blog on vibe.com that covered daily celebrity gossip, and used its bi-annual print counterpart to draw readers to the website.  It would all be worth it if vibe.com could use it as a vehicle to bring in a third of the tabloid-hungry traffic that Mediatakeout, YBF, or Concrete Loop draws.  But, until proven other wise, a print gossip magazine may not be worth the paper its printed on.