Ear Hustle

Black Publication Sister2Sister Magazine Files For Bankruptcy

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Sister2Sister, a women’s magazine that focuses on black Hollywood, has filed for bankruptcy protection and put the print edition on hiatus so it can focus on its website, publisher Jamie Foster Brown told Journal-isms.

Brown, a onetime secretary to Black Entertainment Television co-founder Robert Johnson whose website describes her as “The Barbara Walters of Print,” said Monday that she was preparing an official statement on the publication’s status. She is publisher and sole owner of the magazine.

“The community does not want us to go away,” Brown said by telephone. She said she especially felt a responsibility to prisoners who “didn’t have a voice” and whom she published in the magazine. “We wanted to teach people through celebrities,” she said. “God comes through other people.” Working with Johnson, she said, “I saw how much power the celebrities have.”

Sister2Sister is not listed in the latest circulation or advertising figures for the Publishers Information Bureau or the Alliance for Audited Media, industry bibles. However, a June 2013 profile of the monthly by Mediabistro put its circulation at 135,000. The 64-page October print edition, which was scheduled to leave newsstands on Oct. 14, features seven full-page ads, a one-third page ad for a hair product and a public service spot from the Ad Council on the inside back cover.

Writer Manny Otiko expressed his anger at the publication on Twitter Monday:

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Mediabistro described the publication this way in its June profile:

Background: Initially launched as a newsletter for women in entertainment by industry veteran Jamie Foster Brown, Sister 2 Sister has been breaking stories in black Hollywood since 1988. And, unlike the gossip and innuendo rampant in the blogosphere, S2S routinely gets its information from the stars themselves.

“Whether Halle Berry‘s ex-husband Eric Benet was denying a reported sex addiction or Tamar Braxton and hubby Vince Herbert were dishing about their reality show, it was S2S that often got stars to open up when other publications couldn’t. The mag’s trademark Q&A’s — often including every ‘uh,’ ‘er,’ or ‘you know?’ an interviewee uttered — enable entertainers to tell their stories freely without fear of being misinterpreted. (Rapper DMX‘s ‘ease’ in disclosing that a lover had raped him while he was asleep even landed him in legal trouble in 2006.)

” ‘Our stories, they’re longer than what you’ll find in other publications, but they’re really more like conversations than interviews,’ explained senior editor Ericka Boston. ‘Our mission is to try to teach. So, we’ll talk to the entertainers about the lessons that they’ve learned from whatever experiences they’ve gone through, and it’s more so about achieving an understanding, as opposed to just fishing for a headline.’ . . .”

Source: The Root

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