Welcome back to another edition of FishbowlNY’s weekly Cover Battle. This week we have two music-centric magazines — Rolling Stone and XXL — duking it out. Rolling Stone went with a photo of Jon Hamm as his Mad Men character Don Draper, who is actually Dick Whitman. If that’s a spoiler you need to watch more TV.

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Not sure how anyone thought this was okay.

Some XXL staffers posted a video of rapper Too $hort advising young boys to sexually assault young girls. Naturally this stirred a firestorm that played out on Facebook and Twitter. A petition was started calling for the firing of the magazine’s editor-in-chief Vanessa Satten.

Satten has since apologized and released a statement airing her disappointment and saying that she didn’t know of the video’s contents before it was posted.

“I do not see all content before it goes live. When I saw this video, I was truly offended and thought it crossed the line. I had it taken down immediately. I am disappointed that an employee decided to post it and I am putting internal procedures in place to make sure content like this does not go on the site. The video goes against my value system and represents poor judgment on behalf of the individual who posted it.”

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We here at FishbowlNY are big Nas fans, so we’re excited to check out the November XXL, which hits newsstands October 25. The issue features the Queens rapper discussing his upcoming album, religion and a few other things. However, it’s disappointing that the magazine chose to have Tyler The Creator interview Nas for its cover story.

Not only do we think Tyler is immature and gimmicky, but his interviewing skills don’t seem to be that good. Here is how Tyler presented one of his questions to Nas: “Are you, like — this question might catch you off guard, but I ask myself this — like, when you wake up, like, are you happy? Like, are you satisfied how everything turned out?”

Congratulations Tyler! It sounds impossible, but you somehow managed to say “like” four times in two sentences. Your prize is a high school education. Please use it immediately.

Maybe Tyler was just nervous and the interview gets better, so we’re going to pick up a copy of the issue anyway. But next time XXL chooses a rapper to interview a legend, it might want to consider someone a little more qualified.

If the recent boost in ad sales for women’s magazines wasn’t enough of a sign that print is making a recovery, then how about the news of Harris Publication‘s comeback from its year of title folding?

The publisher shuttered one of its two hip-hop titles, King, last April, but is marking the beginning of 2010 with the release of Juicy, a magazine that according to Harris’ XXL magazine’s Web site, will be the “first celebrity and lifestyle magazine for African-American women to sit on national newsstands alongside People, US Weekly, In Touch, Life & Style and OK.”

The first issue will launch in May and will join XXL as part of the Harris empire.

It’s shaping up to be a good year for the black community’s comeback in the media market, with Vibe‘s December relaunch under new publishers and Moguldom Media Group‘s recent redesign of Bossip.com after a 100 percent traffic increase in 2009.

Of course, launching a lifestyle spin-off does have its downside. Vibe Media Group tried launching one of their own, The Most! last year, just a few weeks before Vibe folded in late June. Let’s hope Harris has more luck in 2010 than Vibe Media had in 2009.

Read More: Harris Publications Announces New Celebrity & Lifestyle Magazine –XXL

XXL Announces Shuttering Of Giant –MediaJobsDaily

Previously: Vibe’s New Owner: Revamped Mag Will Have Greater Online Focus, Broader Scope

The latest incarnation of revived hip-hop magazine Vibe may be debuting with a controversial cover model, Chris Brown, but its new owner’s plans for the pub seem pretty sound.

Today, mediabistro.com got a chance to pick the brain of Leonard Burnett, co-CEO and group publisher of Uptown Media Group, part of the group that purchased Vibe earlier this year and is working to reposition and relaunch it. In an interview with David Hirschman, Burnett explained where he thought Vibe had gone wrong in the past and laid out the new publisher’s plans for the future:

“Vibe thrived off of urban fashion, music, and automotive — and then when you go into ’05, ’06, and ’07 [the advertising] just kept deteriorating. First it was a shift over to digital [for advertisers] and then when the dollars started to even back out, the dollars that you are counting on for the print side in certain categories just started to evaporate at a much faster rate than we were able to break new categories.

The book also didn’t lend itself [to these new categories]. [Vibe's] aesthetic perspective and editorial focus [originally spoke] to a very broad and important perspective of what urban music and culture meant (which really wasn’t just rap, but R&B, reggae, and gospel, and anything you can move and dance to — and even where the consumer was going with the blending of Jay-Z and Coldplay, and this sort of rap and alternative rock). We went from being the kind of Rolling Stone of urban culture to competing with The Source and XXL. These are great books, but…Rolling Stone is really the music and culture magazine that has stood the test of time — and when you look at the breadth of what they have with the core of it being rock ‘n roll, mixing the old with the new and the influx of urban, and the political scene, the fashion scene.

So now, from an editorial perspective, we are going back to an editorial discussion that was much broader than it was. It has a lot better visuals. We’re going back to great photography, which was always such a big component of the editorial product. The book will be much more visual and have a better quality of paper. The consumer should look up to Vibe — Vibe is showing them something that they don’t know about, and give them something to aspire to. Not like Uptown, but something new and on the cutting edge.”

Read more of Burnett’s interview for more on Vibe‘s new digital product and the decision to hire a new editor.

Earlier: Vibe Relaunches With Maybe Not The Best Cover Celebrity

Jeff Bercovici at AOL’s DailyFinance is reporting that music magazine Vibe is ceasing publication.

Just last month, the magazine’s parent company, Vibe Media Group, announced the launch of spin-off The Most!, a “celebrity fashion, lifestyle, red-carpet moments, travel, and news” publication that was due to hit newsstands earlier this month. There’s no word on whether Vibe‘s shut down will affect that publication as well.

Publicists at the magazine were unavailable for comment, but we’ll keep you updated as the story progresses. If you have any information, leave it in the comments below or email us.

Vibe‘s closure leaves The Source as the one remaining one of the few remaining magazines covering hip hop and R&B, after Blender folded earlier this year. (A commenter kindly pointed out that Giant and XXL still cover the industry, and there might be others that we don’t know about.)

Update: The New York Times has word from Vibe‘s publicist that the magazine will close down operations today, although there is no word on how many people will be losing their jobs. And here is part of an internal memo sent by Vibe Media Group CEO Steve Aaron to staffers today: “It is with a heavy heart that I share some tough news, VMG is closing down effective today, June 30 due to lack of additional financial investments.” So, it looks like Vibe won’t be the only publication to go. If the whole media group is closing up shop, it looks like The Most! is dead, too.

Lastly, Ron Mwangaguhunga spoke to Vibe editor at large Rob Kenner for his blog The Corsair. Kenner revealed that the magazine had been working on a Michael Jackson tribute prior to its demise. How much more depressing can it get? The magazine’s own death prevented it from celebrating the death of the legend who was so influential to the music that Vibe covered.