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Editor tells genesis of "Black America's Newsmagazine".
In its five-year existence, Emerge magazine has been its share of ups and downs. But with the help of its new full owner, Black Entertainment Television and the editorial expertise of George Curry, the full-color glossy publication may well be on its way to truly becoming "Black America's Newsmagazine."
BET, the Washington, D.C.-based cable channel, assumed 100 percent stock ownership of the magazine last summer. That change helped stabilize the business side. It also helped strengthen the focus on the editorial side, according to George Curry, a veteran journalist formerly with the Chicago Tribune, who is Emerge's editor-in-chief. Curry spoke at the Ad Club of Boston's "Magazine Day" at the World Trade Center Jan. 25.
"It had an identity problem," he said. "People didn't know whether it was a newsmagazine or a black version of Entertainment Weekly. The first decision I made was to change the tag-line from "Our Voice in Today's World," to "Black America's Newsmagazine."
Realizing in the late '80s that blacks needed a sophisticated, issues-oriented national publication, the late Wilmer Ames Jr., a former reporter with Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated conducted research which concluded that African Americans would indeed read and support such a publication. With...