People (magazine)
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| Editor | Larry Hackett |
|---|---|
| Categories | Celebrity, human interest, news |
| First issue | March 4, 1974 |
| Company | Time Inc. (Time Warner) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | People |
| ISSN | 0093-7673 |
People (original name People Weekly) is a weekly American magazine of celebrity and human-interest stories, published by Time Inc.[1] As of 2006, it has a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion.[2] It was named "Magazine of the Year" by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation and advertising.[3] People ranked #6 on Advertising Age's annual "A-list" and #3 on Adweek's "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
The magazine runs a roughly 50/50 mix of celebrity and human-interest stories.[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 a "publicist-friendly strategy."[2]
People has a website, http://www.people.com, which focuses exclusively on celebrity news.[1][3] In February 2007, the website drew 39.6 million page views "within a day" of the Golden Globes. However "the mother ship of Oscar coverage" broke a site record with 51.7 million page views on the day after the Oscars, beating the previous record set just a month before from the Golden Globes.[4]
People is perhaps best known for its yearly special issues naming "Most Beautiful People", "The Best Dressed", and "The Sexiest Man Alive".
The magazine maintains a single editorial bureau in Los Angeles. Due to economic reasons it has recently closed bureaus in New York City, Austin, Miami, Chicago, and London.[2][3]
Since Marche 30 2010 there is a Greek edition of People.
Contents |
History
People was co-founded by Dick Durrell and Matthew Maynard [5] as a spin-off from 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."[6]
It debuted in 1974, with a March 4 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.[2] The magazine was, apart from its cover, printed in black-and-white.
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.[7] Though the original idea was that Spanish-language translations of articles from the English magazine would comprise half the content of People en Español over time came to have entirely original content[8].
In 2002, People introduced People Stylewatch, a title focusing on celebrity style, fashion, and beauty- a newsstand extension of its Stylewatch column. Due to its success, the frequency of People Stylewatch was increased to 10 times per year in 2007.
In Australia, the localized version of People is titled Who because of a pre-existing lad's mag published under the title People.
Teen People
 Teen People April 2006 |
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| Managing Editor | Christina Ferrari Barbara O'Dair |
|---|---|
| Categories | Celebrity |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| First issue | 1998 |
| Final issue | September, 2006 |
| Company | Time Inc. (Time Warner) |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | [1] |
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006.[9] Subscribers to this magazine received Seventeen Magazine for the rest of their issues in exchange. 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.[10] Teenpeople.com was merged into People.com in April 2007. People.com will "carry teen-focused stories that are branded as TeenPeople.com", Mark Golin the editor of People.com explained, with the decision to merge the brands, "We've got traffic on TeenPeople, People is a larger site, why not combine and have the teen traffic going to one place?"[11]
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."[2]
People reportedly paid $4.1 million for newborn photos of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.[2] The photos set a single-day traffic record for their website, attracting 26.5 million page views.[2]
Sexiest Man Alive
The annual feature the "Sexiest Man Alive" is billed as a benchmark of male attractiveness. It is determined in a similar procedure to Time's Person of the Year. The origin of the title was a discussion on a planned story on Mel Gibson. A female editor exclaimed, "Oh my God, he is the sexiest man alive!" And someone else said, "You should use that as a cover line."[12]
For the first decade or so, the feature appeared at uneven intervals. Originally awarded in the wintertime, it shifted around the calendar, resulting in gaps as short as seven months and as long as a year and a half (with no selection at all during 1994). Since 1997, the dates have settled between mid-November and early December.
Dates of magazine issues, winners, ages of winners at the time of selection, and pertinent comments are listed below.
| Year | Choice | Age | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1985-02-04 | Mel Gibson | 29 | First person chosen |
| 1986-01-27 | Mark Harmon[13] | 34 | |
| 1987-03-30 | Harry Hamlin | 35 | |
| 1988-09-12 | John F. Kennedy, Jr. | 27 | Longest gap between selections: eighteen months. Was the youngest winner. Only non-actor to win. First member to have since died(1999). |
| 1989-12-16 | Sean Connery | 59 | Oldest person to win the title. First winner to have portrayed James Bond 007. |
| 1990-07-23 | Tom Cruise | 28 | |
| 1991-07-23 | Patrick Swayze | 39 | Deceased, 2009(Pancreatic Cancer). |
| 1992-03-16 | Nick Nolte | 51 | |
| 1993-10-19 | Richard Gere Cindy Crawford |
44 27 |
People took a one-year hiatus from Sexiest Man and instead awarded Sexiest Couple |
| 1995-01-30 | Brad Pitt | 31 | First of two awards |
| 1996-07-29 | Denzel Washington | 41 | First and only African American winner |
| 1997-11-17 | George Clooney | 36 | First of two awards |
| 1998-11-16 | Harrison Ford | 56 | |
| 1999-11-15 | Richard Gere | 50 | First two-time winner |
| 2000-11-13 | Brad Pitt | 36 | First two-time solo winner |
| 2001-11-26 | Pierce Brosnan | 48 | Second winner to have portrayed James Bond 007. |
| 2002-12-02 | Ben Affleck | 30 | |
| 2003-12-01 | Johnny Depp | 40 | First of two awards |
| 2004-11-29 | Jude Law | 31 | |
| 2005-11-28 | Matthew McConaughey | 36 | |
| 2006-11-27 | George Clooney | 45 | Second win |
| 2007-11-26 | Matt Damon | 37 | |
| 2008-11-25 | Hugh Jackman | 40 | |
| 2009-11-18 | Johnny Depp | 46 | Second win |
Notes
^ a: The ratio, according to Variety, is 53% to 47%.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "People Magazine Subscription Versus Online Web Site", ArticlesBase.com, September 2008, webpage: art-base-people-mag: states magazine is half "celebrity" news and half "human interest".
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 People who need people, a July 2006 article from Variety magazine.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Martha Nelson Named Editor, The People Group, a January 2006 Time Warner press release.
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/business/media/19oscars.html?ei=5070&en=eb4d4a33da296591&ex=1177128000&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1176998874-81JFp4XY79gbmv17Dl/bCQ<Media Industry News letter, March 2006>
- ↑ Founder of People Magazine from a University of Minnesota website
- ↑ People's Premiere, a March 1974 story from Time magazine
- ↑ "Grad Named Head of People en Español." tufts.edu. February 29, 2004.
- ↑ People En Espanol: Spanish Magazine
- ↑ "Teen People magazine closes, but website will still continue." New York Times. July 26, 2006.
- ↑ Medialifemagazine.com.
- ↑ TeenPeople.com to Merge Into People.com
- ↑ Argetsinger, Amy; Roberts, Roxanne. "Matt Damon??!!! We Demand to Differ!" The Washington Post. November 19, 2007. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
- ↑ http://www.people.com/people/package/gallery/0,,20237714_20154495_20349092,00.html
References
- "People Magazine Subscription Versus Online Web Site", ArticlesBase.com, September 2008, webpage (CPU-bound): art-base-people-mag.
External links
- People Online issue webpage.
- Voila People Online issue webpage.
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