"My understanding is that in order to keep it going he began to 'cover' world music, a decision that peed off some people"

I'd be amazed if that were true. (World music, like folk, has never exactly been a moneyspinner. It's only in the last 5 years that it's started to throw off its terminal unfashionability).

Isn't it more likely that such a move simply coincided with editor and staff and contributors' generally broadening their musical horizons? After all, the 80s was when "world music" (as a flawed but practical term) was coined.

Everything I've seen of (inside) magazines has taught me that what keeps magazines going has far less to do with what they are ostensibly about, and much more to do with content, vision, panache, design, ambition, hard work, luck etc.