Megan Thee Stallion For W, The Magazine Was Sold To Bustle Digital Group & Other Investors

By  |  0 Comments
Share Button

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — “Savage” female rapper Megan Thee Stallion who was recently named as Revlon‘s new brand ambassador (see it here) covers the “Music Issue” of W.

Journalist Clover Hope interviewed the Houston hottie for this issue, which was shot by Colin Dodgson and styled by EJ King.

Head over to W to read the cover story in its entirety.

W magazine, the oversize fashion magazine whose 450,000-person circulation belies an outsize influence, is changing hands again. Now to be known as W Media, its new operating partner will be Bustle Digital Group, a web company whose properties include Bustle, an online magazine for women, and Mic, the social justice-focused website, along with a group of investors that includes the movie and television producer Jason Blum, the racecar driver Lewis Hamilton and the model Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s daughter, who is just 18.

We did it all over Zoom,” said W’s editor, Sara Moonves, who will remain. “None of us even met in person.

Ms. Moonves, 35, got help putting together the group from the model Karlie Kloss, who is also investing.

Ms. Moonves father is Les Moonves, the former head of CBS. In high school at Harvard-Westlake, she became close friends with the actor Jonah Hill. She met Mr. Blum through W’s editor at large, Lynn Hirschberg.

Mr. Blum is also a friend of Bryan Goldberg, who heads Bustle and founded Bleacher Report, a sports website that Turner Broadcasting bought in 2012 for what Lizzie Widdicombe of The New Yorker reported was more than $200 million.

The deal is the latest attempt to revive the publication that was near death, maybe on life support back in March, when Marc Lotenberg, the owner of Future Media Group, furloughed the majority of W’s staff and suspended its publication, blaming the coronavirus.

Just nine months before, he had bought it from Condé Nast in a deal The New York Post estimated at $7 million.

In the weeks preceding the shutdown, the magazine was hard at work on a new issue featuring Megan Thee Stallion.

Mr. Lotenberg was hardly the ideal suitor for the magazine — his design and fashion title, Surface magazine, was notorious among contributors for its late payments — but Condé Nast, its parent company since 1999, wasn’t unloading W because things in the industry were good.

Mr. Lotenberg’s purchase of W came with the understanding that he would be able to pay Condé Nast in installments, said two Condé Nast employees who requested anonymity because the negotiations were private. By January of this year, as Mr. Lotenberg later acknowledged to The Times, he was running behind on payments to them and to vendors.

The pandemic made things worse, making him open to finding a buyer.

The biggest partner will remain Bustle Digital Group, whose primary experience is online but was eager to expand into print. Ms. Moonves said W would publish six print issues in the next year. The furloughed staff is back on the job.

Photos Credit: Colin Dodgson

Source: NY Times

Share Button

Donovan

Donovan is the CEO and Editor-In-Chief of www.dmfashionbook.com. For all general inquiries please email don@dmfashionbook.com Donovan has a BA in Journalism & Media Studies from the prestigious Rutgers University. He's currently studying entertainment and fashion law.