Original title: Spin Magazine Sale Collapses After Buyer Doesn’t Wire the Money
It was supposed to be a new chapter for Spin magazine — and it sounded, at least in terms of the diminished expectations of the current media landscape, like a theoretically decent one, too. Next Management Partners, the Santa Monica-based venture capital firm that owns the Bob Guccione Jr.-edited magazine brand, had a deal in place to sell the publisher to the Dennis Cunningham-run Airtab, a Florida-based events platform that connects bookers with local artists. Talks had been ongoing for the past eight months, both sides had incurred about six-figures on legal bills hammering out the details, a major concert had been planned and a 1,200-word embargoed deal announcement was ready to go. In the lead up, the would-be new owner, Airtab’s Cunningham, told The Hollywood Reporter that he would take the quarterly magazine to a monthly cadence, bump up its circulation to 150,000-200,000 copies, increase the full-time, mostly remote staff of 8 employees by 25 percent over the next year, bolste