3 Figures Among Bidders for Vanguarde
At least three figures are bidding for the assets of Vanguarde Media, Inc., the publishers of Savoy, Savoy Professional, Heart & Soul and Honey magazines that filed for bankruptcy protection last year.
They are Black Enterprise Publisher Earl G. Graves, former Vanguarde CEO Keith Clinkscales and Provender Capital, headed by Frederick O. Terrell, a major financial backer of Vanguarde before Provender cut off the money last November, Joseph E. Sarachek, managing partner of Triax Capital Advisors, told Journal-isms today. Sarachek’s firm is overseeing Vanguarde’s restructuring.
Clinkscales has joined with Len Burnett, Vanguarde’s former group publisher, to make his bid, Sarachek said. There are also “a couple of folks who haven’t come forward” who are expected to be present for the March 31 resolution in bankruptcy court in Manhattan, he said.
The bid will go to the person who bids “highest and best,” Sarachek said, “best” meaning demonstrating financial wherewithal.
On The Deal.com, Peter Lauria reported today that, “a minimum price of $1.85 million plus the assumption of about $1.9 million in liabilities has already been set. That $1.85 million figure is equal to the amount owed to Provender — other notable investors in Vanguarde include Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson and Strauss Zelnick’s Zelnick Media Corp. The New York-based publisher of titles serving a black audience owes about $15 million to secured and unsecured creditors.
“Vanguarde, which former Vibe magazine CEO Keith Clinkscales founded four years ago, is believed to have burned through about $60 million without reaching profitability. It was propelled into bankruptcy after failing to secure an additional $10 million in funding last year,” Lauria wrote.
In Friday’s New York Post, Keith J. Kelly reported that, “The bankrupt Vanguarde Media finally managed to put the November/December issues of their magazines, Honey, Heart & Soul and Savoy, into the mail last month.”
As reported Jan. 7, many of those who edited the Vanguarde publications have moved on, leaving open to question who would put out the magazines if they were revived.
“White Affirmative Action” Series Honored
A series on “white affirmative action” by Daniel Golden of The Wall Street Journal has won a 2003 National Award for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association. Golden’s series won first prize in the over-100,000 category for a series or group of articles.
The series ran Feb. 20, April 25, May 14, June 20, Oct. 29, and Dec. 30, 2003, and has also won a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism.
The series detailed “how some college applicants are given a boost if they are children of university alumni or of prospective donors,” the Journal wrote then.
“The four page-one articles were published amid a national debate about the role of affirmative action in university-admissions processes and ‘possibly influenced’ a decision on the matter made by the U.S. Supreme Court, the [Polk] award administrators said in a press release,” the Journal reported then. “The court limited but upheld the constitutionality of affirmative-action programs.”
In his May 14 piece, Golden wrote:
“Five justices or their children qualified for an admissions edge known as ‘legacy preference,’ which most U.S. colleges give to the sons and daughters of their alumni. This preference is sometimes criticized as affirmative action for wealthy whites, since the students who benefit from it overwhelmingly fall into that category.
“Two justices, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy, have family ties to Stanford University that span three generations. A third justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, is a Stanford graduate and the mother of two Stanford alumni, and has served on the university’s board of trustees. Justice John Paul Stevens attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern Law School, as did his father. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her daughter Jane formed the first mother-daughter combination ever to attend Harvard Law School.
“It isn’t clear whether academic lineage played a role in the admissions of these justices’ children, and several of them had stellar high-school records. Yet judges — like everyone else wrestling with the affirmative-action debate — inevitably filter it through the prism of their own personal history.”
Cincinnati TV Reporter Denies He’s a Pedophile
“Channel 9 reporter Stephen Hill, in the hospital recovering from self-inflicted wounds, told his attorney he isn’t, as police say, a pedophile,” Kimball Perry reported Tuesday in the Cincinnati Post.
“‘He’s maintaining his innocence,’ Hill’s attorney, Ken Lawson, said Monday.
“Hill, 45, was supposed to appear at an arraignment Monday to answer to eight counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. He was unable — physically or emotionally — to appear Monday, Lawson said.”
Meanwhile, Cincinnati’s WLWT-TV reported that Hill’s arrest “has prompted some to look into Tri-State mentoring programs.
“Four of the teens he mentored are among his alleged victims, according to police,” the station reported.
“WLWT Eyewitness News 5’s Tony Gnau reported that parents have several options if they want to check the backgrounds of perspective mentors for their children.
“Cincinnati Youth Collaborative spokeswoman Myrtis Powell said parents need to ask plenty of questions before taking on a mentor. She encouraged questions like ‘How do you know a mentor will work well with my son or daughter?’ and ‘Where did you find this person?’ Also, she said, don’t be shy to ask more about the mentoring program itself, Gnau reported.”
Successes, Cautionary Tales in Seeking Latinos
“So many chain-owned papers have jumped into Spanish-language print that they are beginning to compete not just with established Latino newspapers, but each other,” writes Mark Fitzgerald of Editor & Publisher in a cover piece called, “Newspapers Rock en Espanol,” which outlines successes and cautionary tales in newspapers’ reach for the Latino market.
“In the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Belo’s Al Dia contends with Knight Ridder’s La Estrella. This week in Los Angeles, Tribune Co.’s Hoy kicks off a three-way competition with MediaNews Group Inc.’s free-distribution weekly Impacto USA and Impremedia LLC’s La Opinion. (The Los Angeles-based La Opinion remains the leading Spanish-language daily in the United States.)
“This fight for Hispanic readers is now happening in the toniest neighborhoods. In West Palm Beach, Fla., The Palm Beach Post’s brand-new La Palma, launched on Feb. 6, already has competition from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which began home delivery in Palm Beach County of its weekly El Sentinel the day after La Palma launched. This spring, two Spanish-language weeklies will contend in Southampton, one of Long Island, N.Y.’s most exclusive communities.
“Daily newspapers beset by declining readership and changing market demographics are increasingly exploring the Spanish-language market. They look with envy on the success mainstream papers have achieved with Spanish-language papers. El Nuevo Herald in Miami became the fastest-growing newspaper in the Knight Ridder chain when it was loosed from The Miami Herald. Tribune Co.’s Hoy, based in New York, in just four years grew to be America’s second-biggest Spanish-language daily, and that was before launches in Chicago and Los Angeles ? let alone the seven other heavily Hispanic markets the tabloid intends to conquer.
“And while it may seem that established dailies ? desperate to stem circulation losses ? should be trying to bring readers directly to their papers, a recent study suggests separate ethnic papers reinforce their flagships. Latinos, like other immigrants, will eventually come to the English-language paper, concludes a major study of San Francisco Bay area ethnic media by Rufus Browning, a professor at San Francisco State University,” he writes.
Advertising in Hispanic Magazines Outpaces Rest
“Advertising dollars devoted to Hispanic magazines grew 24% in 2003 over 2002, compared with growth of 8.6% for the general market, according to Media Economics Group,” Miriam Jordan reports in the Wall Street Journal.
“Fort Lauderdale, Fla. General Motors poured $7.7 million into ads in Latino magazines in 2003, or 166% more than the previous year. Procter & Gamble, the top advertiser in the Hispanic segment, increased spending last year by one-third, to $11.2 million, relative to 2002.
“It’s all because of Census Bureau data that showed Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority in the U.S. and that their buying power is surging. The statistics, which were released last year, also are creating a stampede of mainstream and niche publishers into the Hispanic magazine market.”
La Opinion Counterattacks as Hoy Debuts in L.A.
“Officials of La Opinion, the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, on Monday declared war on its newest competitor, telling the publisher of a new daily called Hoy to ‘bring it on,'” reports Roger Vincent in the Los Angeles Times.
“Hoy’s Los Angeles edition premiered Monday. It is published by Chicago-based Tribune Co., which publishes editions of Hoy in New York and Chicago and also owns the Los Angeles Times.
“La Opinion counterattacked by launching an ad campaign it valued at more than $750,000 that will appear on billboards, radio, bus benches and TV,” Vincent wrote.
Gannett Touts Series on Ecuadoreans in Suburbia
The Gannett Co.’s diversity page is highlighting a series in the Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., that examines the economic conditions in Ecuador that are driving an exodus from the country “and looks at where and how the Ecuadoreans live when they reach the New York City suburbs,” as the newspaper said.
“Reporter Leah Rae and Photographer Ricky Flores of The Journal News at Westchester provided a special report on the estimated 15,000 Ecuadoreans living in the suburbs -? making them one of the fastest growing groups in the region.
“Rae and Flores traveled to Giron, Ecuador, and visited many of the Ecuadorean neighborhoods in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. Dwight Worley, a computer-assisted reporting specialist, contributed to the report.”
As Hip Hop Spreads, Vibe’s Figures Grow
The spread of hip hop has been good for Vibe magazine, says new top editor Mimi Valdes. Valdes, who graduated from NYU with a degree in magazine journalism in 1992, took over top editing duties from Emil Wilbekin in September, when he was promoted to “brand director,” Valdes says in an interview with Jill Singer of Media Bistro.
Singer asked, “Do you feel like this embrace of hip-hop by the mainstream has affected Vibe’s readership?”
Valdes answered:
“Definitely. I mean, the magazine has grown so much. We’re at 850,000 now, 11 years later, and we have fans that have been with us since day one, when the magazine industry thought we were a novelty and we were going to close within a year or two. But we also have all those other people that came to us as they discovered the music.
“I think that’s what Vibe has always done well. Because we were there from day one and always believed in the music and its power, we always treated it with a lot of respect and a lot of love, and showcased these artists that weren’t going to be showcased in Rolling Stone.
“Rolling Stone might embrace hip-hop a little bit more, but R&B isn’t something that they necessarily embrace. I mean Mary J. Blige?she might have been on a group cover, but she’s never had her own cover, which is mind-boggling. Or R. Kelly. These are major artists with major record sales and they still don’t get the recognition at other places.
“Hip-hop has been a little bit different because I think that’s been the part of the music?the traditional rap or whatever?that has grown the most and seen the biggest attraction of fans. That’s also what’s made our magazine grow, because there have been more and more people that have discovered it and fallen in love and they’re coming to us to read more about it.”
NBC Exec to Head TV One Programming, Production
“Veteran television programming executive Lee Gaither has been named executive vice president of programming and production for TV One, the new cable network targeting African American adults,” the new network, which launched Jan. 19, announces.
“In this position, he will be responsible for TV One?s programming strategy and will oversee all program production, acquisition, scheduling and business development for the network.” CEO Johnathan Rodgers “was directly managing the programming process” until Gaither arrived, a spokeswoman told Journal-isms.
“Gaither joins TV One from NBC, where he was vice president of programming and development for NBC Entertainment,” the news release continued.
“He worked closely with NBC business development and sales teams utilizing his expertise in programming, emerging technology and licensing and merchandising to assist in ventures such as the acquisition of Telemundo, and the management of NBC?s investment in the PAX Network. Gaither also collaborated with NBC?s syndication group to develop new production models for scripted series on and off the network. He was named to that position in 2001, after joining NBC in 1999 as vice president, teen and family programs, where he developed teen-focused Saturday morning programming and other family primetime specials. He also orchestrated the historic sale of the Saturday morning block to Discovery Networks.”
Gaither was listed last fall in a program at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business as having “enlightened members with tips on how to succeed in Corporate America as a person of color,” and last summer was on a program of the National Association of Minority Media Executives .
