people magazine

People is a weekly American magazine of celebrity and human interest stories, published by Time Inc.. As of 2006, it has a circulation of 3.73 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion.^[1] It was named "Magazine of the Year" by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation and advertising.^[2]

The magazine runs a roughly 50/50^[3] mix of celebrity and human interest stories, a ratio it has maintained, according to its editors, since 2001.^[1] People's editors claim to refrain from printing pure celebrity gossip, enough so to lead celebrity publicists to propose exclusives to the magazine, evidence of what one staffer calls it a "publicist-friendly strategy."^[1]

People has a website, http://www.people.com, which focuses exclusively on celebrity news.^[2]

People is perhaps best known for its yearly special issues naming "The 50 Most Beautiful People", "The Best and Worst Dressed", and "The Sexiest Man Alive".

The magazine maintains editorial bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Austin (Texas), and Miami (Florida).^[1][2]

History

People was cofounded by Dick Durrell^[4] as a spin-off of the "People" page in Time magazine. Its first managing editor, Richard Stolley, characterized the magazine as:

"getting back to the people who are causing the news and who are caught up in it, or deserve to be in it. Our focus is on people, not issues."^[5]

It debuted in 1974, with a March 4th issue featuring actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the movie The Great Gatsby, on the cover. That issue also featured stories on Gloria Vanderbilt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the wives of U.S. Vietnam veterans who are Missing In Action.^[1]

In 1996 Time, Inc. launched a Spanish-language magazine entitled People EN ESPAÑOL. The company has said that the new publication emerged after a 1995 issue of the original magazine was distributed with two distinct covers, one featuring the slain Tejano singer Selena and the other featuring the hit television series "Friends"; the Selena cover sold out while the other did not.^[6] Though the original idea was that Spanish-language translations of articles from the English magazine would comprise half the content of the newer publication, People EN ESPAÑOL over time came to have a mix of 90% original content and 10% translated material perceived by editors to have intercultural importance.^[7]

In 1997 the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shutter publication of Teen People effective immediately. The last issue to be released will be for September 2006. There were numerous reasons cited for the publication shutdown, including a downfall in ad pages, competition from both other teen-oriented magazines and the internet along with a decrease in circulation numbers. [1]

In Australia, the localised version of People is titled Who because of a pre-existing lad's mag published under the title People.

Competition for celebrity photos

In a July 2006 Variety article, Janice Min, Us Weekly editor-in-chief, blamed People for the increase in cost to publishers of celebrity photos:

"They are among the biggest spenders of celebrity photos in the industry....One of the first things they ever did, that led to the jacking up of photo prices, was to pay $75,000 to buy pictures of Jennifer Lopez reading Us magazine, so Us Weekly couldn't buy them.

"That was the watershed moment that kicked off high photo prices in my mind. I had never seen anything like it. But they saw a competitor come along, and responded. It was a business move, and probably a smart one."^[1]

People reportedly paid $4.1 million for newborn photos of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.^[1] The photos set a single-day traffic record for their website, attracting 26.5 million page views.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} People who need people, a July 2006 article from Variety magazine
2. ^ ^a b c Martha Nelson Named Editor, The People Group, a January 2006 Time Warner press release
3. ^ The ratio, according to Variety, is 53% to 47%
4. ^ Founder of People Magazine from a University of Minnesota website
5. ^ People's Premiere, a March 1974 story from Time magazine
6. ^ http://www.tufts.edu/communications/stories/022904PeopleEspanol.htm Grad Named Head of ‘People en Español’
7. ^ http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news1999/dec99/news31220.html "At People, learning to speak Spanish wasn't so easy," Media Life Magazine, December 1999