Mass Appeal Folds

100,000-circ hip-hop title calls it quits.

By Dylan Stableford
05/14/2008

In a refrain that's becoming all-too-familiar for niche music magazine publishers, Mass Appeal, the 12-year-old Brooklyn-based hip-hop and lifestyle magazine, is calling it quits.

The 100,000-circulation title had recently published its 50th issue.

Colossal Media, which owns Mass Appeal, will continue to publish a female-targeted spin-off, Missbehave, as well as Mass Appeal's Web site.

Co-founder and publisher Adrian Moeller told the Web site Gawker that he is in talks to sell the Mass Appeal, and that a print edition of may eventually relaunch.

In 2005, Patrick Elasik, the magazine's 26-year-old co-founder and co-owner, was found dead. He had been electrocuted while crossing subway tracks in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

Elasik founded the magazine with Moeller in 1996.

The shuttering of Mass Appeal is the third nationally-distributed niche music title to do so this year. In February, Seattle-based alternative country music magazine No Depression folded; Harp followed suit. In March, Resonance, a small, well-regarded Seattle-based quarterly, shut down.