Results tagged “Jazz Times” from Jazz Beyond Jazz

Jazz Times was credited with 100,000 circulation in virtually all press accounts of its recent transfer of ownership -- which with annual subscription rate of nearly $24 per year suggests annual income from readership alone (there's income from ads, too) easily be in excess of $2 million dollars.

The quick revival of magazine Jazz Times by Madavor Media is a good thing, but freelance contributors whose work has already been published are being told that they'll be paid only 50% of amounts due.

Jazz Times, the monthly which suspended publication in May, has been bought by Madavor Media and will print an August issue produced by its familiar staff and contributors, according to today's New York Times. Boston-based Madavor counts International Figure Skating, Volleyball and The Best of Northeast Golf among its "core titles," having acquired Doll, a long-established UK collector's periodical, in June 2008 and four regionally-oriented golf titles last September.

JazzTimes confirms rumors first reported here the 38-year-old monthly magazine's deep financial distress requires it to stop publishing. Its management hopes for a brand-sale and re-emergence. But in a longer email to freelance contributors, those same managers adopt a can't-help-you-pal shrug toward the brand's freelance contributors.

An associate editor of JazzTimes "until a couple of weeks ago when I was laid off" has confirmed that the magazine is in deep trouble. "There was some hope of a new buyer coming to the rescue," he writes, "but as of my last contact with the guys it wasn't looking good." I'd heard previously that the proposed deal fell through.

"Hopefully that will still happen," this source continues, "but with the loss of JVC and other advertisers it's doubtful the magazine would be able to survive in its present format." Meanwhile, numerous writers and photographers have contacted me with tales of waiting on payments since last March. These are bad signs. A lot of jazz people are, like my correspondent, hopeful. We'd like Jazz Times to continue, to prosper and flower. More news when I get some. . . good or bad.

howardmandel.com
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New speculation on the jazz magazine crisis: Having no summer advertorial supplements for JVC Jazz Festivals (which aren't happening) may have hugely hurt JT's seasonal revenues. How could the loss of three consecutive monthly multi-page inserts, all expenses paid for by the client, not shake a publication's income stream?

Complete disclosure: I edited the JVC Jazz Festival program books in the 1990s, when they were inserts into Tower Records' free monthly magazine Pulse!, and for a year when JVC America, responsible for the Japanese owned electronics firms' promotional investment in George Wein's international jazz fests, switched the contract to Jazziz. Ah, those were the days!

Rumors abound that JazzTimes magazine is folding -- it's laid off employees, notified writers of waits for May payments, not shipped its June issue to the printers and failed to sell itself to a new publisher. A senior contributor says he was told not to write his next column until asked for it. These are rumors, I stress: I've emailed JT's publisher and editors for confirmation or denial, comment and clarification, without response so far. It wouldn't be terribly surprising, given the economic drift and hard times for print media. But the demise of JazzTimes would change the game for everybody -- musicians, readers writers, advertisers -- focused on jazz.

In his article on the collaboration of Jim Hall and Bill Frisell in the April issue of Jazz Times, Evan Haga refers to the "Big Three" of current jazz guitarists: Frisell, John Scofield and John McLaughlin. Subscribe by Email | Subscribe by RSS | Follow on Twitter
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