Word on the street is that XXL’s EIC and HBIC (that’s Head Blogger in Charge for you rookies) Elliot “YN” Wilson has been relieved of his job. I heard through the birdies that Music Editor Leah Rose also walked away from XXL. Rumor has it that Harris Publication is looking to retool the hip-hop rag and focus more on strengthening xxlmag.com. I was hoping it had something to do with all those Lil Wayne covers.

Seriously though, it’s getting harder for magazines to survive in an age of new media. This talk about print vs. online reminds me of what VIBE’s EIC Danyel Smith (who happens to be Elliott Wilson’s wife) said about the future of her own magazine a little over a year ago: “Vibe.com exists because of our magazine, but in five years I think the opposite will be true…I am constantly going upstairs and asking for more bandwidth rather than pages at this point.”

Then again, we don’t know for sure why Wilson got fired.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.