Two weeks after its takeover by an online media company, Spin magazine’s future as a print publication was cast further into doubt on Friday when 11 employees — a third of the staff — were laid off and publication plans for the bimonthly magazine were suspended.
Whether Spin, an alternative music magazine founded in 1985, will disappear in printed form altogether is unclear.
The next issue, dated September/October and featuring the rapper Azealia Banks on the cover, will come out in late August. But according to a statement on Sunday by Spin’s new owner, Buzzmedia, there will be no November/December issue while the company figures out what form a printed Spin might take given the magazine’s expansion online.
“Buzzmedia and Spin are committed to moving forward with print, but we are still determining exactly how print fits in with Spin’s multiple distribution points and growth initiatives,” the statement said.
On Friday, in its second round of major staff changes in a year, Spin dismissed 11 employees, including Steve Kandell, the editor in chief of the print magazine, and Catherine Davis, its managing editor. Twenty-five staff members remain, led by two editors with deep experience at Spin: Charles Aaron, its editorial director, and Caryn Ganz, the online editor in chief.
“In the coming year, we will build upon this core staff by doubling the editorial team,” Buzzmedia said.
Like most music magazines, Spin has struggled with online competition and falling advertising. To compete with online forces like Pitchfork, Spin introduced an iPad app and beefed up its Web site. In March, it shifted the print edition from monthly to bimonthly publication and lowered the magazine’s rate base, the minimum guaranteed circulation, to 350,000 from 450,000.
Buzzmedia operates a portfolio of music and celebrity Web sites including Stereogum, Idolator, AbsolutePunk and one devoted to Kim Kardashian. From the beginning, the company said it wanted to preserve Spin in print — which could help lure blue-chip advertisers — but it has been ambiguous about the format and the frequency of publication.
One possible model that has been discussed by the new owners, according to two people briefed on the company’s plans who did not want to jeopardize their jobs by commenting publicly on private meetings, is Grantland, a pop culture Web site from ESPN that also anthologizes some of its writing in quarterly books.
For the time being, Spin is relying on its Web site and other online platforms. But those outlets face challenges, too. Over the last year, Spin.com had an average of 490,000 monthly visitors, about half the audience of Pitchfork (with 971,000) and about one-sixth the audience of Rollingstone.com (2.97 million), according to the Web measurement service comScore.