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How To Pitch: The Source

Think outside the music charts when pitching this reborn bible of hip-hop, culture and politics

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Circulation: 275,000
Frequency: Eight times a year
Special Issues:"Power 30 Issue" (October), "Holiday Issue" (December)

Background: You could scour all of hip-hop music and culture and be hard pressed to find an editorial outlet with as much of a rags-to-riches back story, behind-the-scenes drama, and self-made enterprising as The Source. Launched as a one-page newsletter by then-Harvard student Dave Mays in 1988, the mag built credibility by filling in the information gap for rap music lovers as the first pub dedicated to the subgenre, eventually providing broader coverage of the entire culture.

As nice as that distinction may look in the annals of hip-hop's print history, by 2005 The Source was very publicly beleaguered with internal issues. Mays' one-time partner, Raymond Scott, who moonlighted as a fledgling rapper under the stage name Benzino, instructed staff to give positive reviews to artists he was affiliated with, got socked with a gender discrimination suit from the former editor-in-chief, forged a legendary beef with Eminem, and generally left readers, writers, and affiliates turned off from the title. Those, dear "How to Pitch" reader, are the wages of mismanagement.

But that's old news, as far as recently hired editor-in-chief Bonsu Thompson is concerned. Fresh off closing his first few issues as EIC, he's very upfront about the mag's -- umm, should we say challenging? -- past few years. Still, since beginning over 20 years ago, The Source has bested the ebbs and flows of its struggles to write its own survival story. Now owned by The NorthStar Group (brainchild of attorney cum publisher Londell McMillan who previously represented Mays and Scott), the mag is an institution in transition, and Thompson is manning the ship in the shifting tide.

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