Datwon Thomas has tendered his resignation as XXL magazine Editor-In-Chief yesterday. While we’re at it, King magazine has tipped its crown and—alas—is no more. I didn’t blog about Kings’ downfall—or anything for that matter—when it was announced. But the latest turn of events speaks volumes to anyone who wishes to listen: Old-school media is a shrinking Island. The shores are disappearing and the tides are rising fast.

When I heard that Datwon stepped down, just a year after Elliott “YN” Wilson slammed the door, I realized the “urban” media institutions are crumbling around us and there is little one can do to stop the demolition.

Like any seismic shift, the falling didn’t begin this year. “Taps” started playing at least back as far as June 2006, but I was just too preoccupied to hear the horns. I wasn’t alone.

Back then, I was serving as Vibe magazine’s music editor when the publication was sold to the Wicks Group. The take-over came in the form of swift hatchet cuts that shredded the masthead into thirds—nixing the top-editors in one fell swoop. The new owners huddled us into the conference room. They gave the floor to Kenard Gibbs, the president of Vibe who, it turns out, was also caught the business end of the hatchet that day. He softened the blow for us all with a few well-placed words. In the end he gave a thoughtful, moist-y eyed speech, and exited the room to a hero’s standing ovation. It was bitter sweet.

Over the course of the next week, we were called in one at a time to discuss our severances (You’ll pay me to leave? Sweeet!). Those of us who were let go sighed the sigh of freedom. Those who were left behind were shell-shocked, doomed to ponder what side of the masthead the axe would fall upon next (and it did fall, again and again). Associate music editor Rondell Conway, deputy editor Jamie Katz and Lakeba Holler, assistant to the editor, helped me carry out my boxes of CDs and my collection of utterly ridiculous hats (I used to wear them in meetings for no good reason). We said our goodbyes, vowed to stay in touch (we did, for the most part) and I closed the chapter on Vibe, but I had no idea the book was ending on magazines altogether. At the very least, it was being re-written.

This wasn’t the first time I left a magazine job (a music editor one, at that. Another story for another time). But this time, I welcomed the new opportunities. I had already taped the first version of The Parker Report and posted it to Youtube. Aside from that project, I had great relationships with editors at XXL, The Source, and King magazines. I figured I would always be able to keep my byline and a check circulating in the print world.

Fast forward. In the time since I left Vibe, I have written for all of the above publications (and more) including KING’s final cover story. Who knew then, “The Illest Men’s Magazine Ever” would be no more.

King was a victim of an advertising pinch, not necessarily—as you booty hounds know—a faltering audience. Dennis S. Page, publisher of XXL and King confirmed this fact to targetmarketnews.com.

King reported an average circulation of 173,530 for the six months ending Dec. 31, down 11.3 percent from the year before. “Advertising, not circulation, was the problem,” Page said. “The publication’s revenue staples were automobile and alcohol ads.”

Page said XXL, as a music magazine, did not have the same problems and that there were “no concerns” about it folding.

This is good news in a catch 22 sort of way: It says that there is still an audience for King. Unfortunately, there are no advertisers to support the product. Therein, as they say, lies the rub.

Meanwhile, The Source and Vibe—while still making newsstands each month—are losing on both fronts. The audience is shrinking and the advertisers are looking the other way. In February, Vibe cut back its staff and hours in order to save money. A smart holding strategy, given that it will cut its rate base 25 percent in July, from 800K to 600K.

“We have to run our business, including circulation, more profitably and we have to be smart about it,” CEO Steve Aaron said in a statement. “Part of that is eliminating less profitable subscriptions while maintaining our significant circulation leadership in the urban lifestyle space.”

Thing is, the “urban” lifestyle space is still viable. But times are a changing. And the mighty brands like XXL, Vibe and The Source will survive the new media revolution but surely they won’t remain wholly in their present forms. Nor will we, the journalists who have displayed bylines in these mags, come out unchanged.

Chloe Hilliard, the spirited journalist who created journalisticks.com because, she tells me via email, “I felt mediabistro, gawker, and all the other ‘media sites’ did not address my needs or share my view as a journalist of color.”

Her site recently hosted an awesome tweet chat, in which new and seasoned journalists pondered the great questions of our time and answered them in 142 characters or less.

Chloe is an NYU grad and can get to finger wagging and neck swiveling when discussing the state of—gasp!—“urban” journalists (I say “urban” for lack of better word. Got any suggestions?)

Most recently Chloe was let go from The Village Voice, which has been making cuts for some time now. “I did not sense that I was going to be next,” she says. “From the time I was hired at The Voice I learned never to feel settled in. Folks were fired quite frequently. My Co-workers and I figured it out: They let go of someone once every 3 weeks.”

But don’t dare imply that Chloe was fired from her previous job as an editor at The Source.

“Let’s get this straight,” she says. “I quit my job at The Source in Feb 2007. I was burnt out and fed up. I worked so hard there and the majority of us did but it got to the point where it was beating a dead horse.“

Two years later and The Source is once again touting new management. Time will tell if it will creep back into the psyche of its former audience. Presently XXL has taken the first position in hip-hop publications. But if you examine the mastheads of all three publications, you’ll find a skeleton crew. Less than a handful of writers and editors are responsible for the brainpower of these storied institutions. Freelancers are getting less money per word, editors are being forced to do more writing, and “content” is stretched thin across all platforms.

In all this, we are all learning, feeling our way in the dark. Many new journalists at magazines will have to do so without the guidance of journalists who have seen the space evolve. Elliott’s and Datwon’s departures as well as Jermaine Hall’s cut from King—a magazine he helped make more smart than smut—signals a change in the landscape and perhaps a changing of the guards.

But what’s a magazine to do when facing budget cuts and a shrinking ad market?

Chloe has a few suggestions:

“The future of publications should be to reduce to bi-monthly or quarterly, making each issue a collectors item chock full of amazing features, outside the box packages and essays.”

I think Chloe has a good strategy, here. I also say go longer with stories, more in-depth. More analysis, investigative work. Either that, or hold your breath and wait for for the coming tsunami.

*If you were the editor in chief or your favorite magazine, what changes would you make?

**And is there a better way to say “urban journalist”? Do tell.