People (magazine)

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People
Editor Larry Hackett
Categories Celebrity, human interest, news
Frequency Weekly
First issue March 4, 1974
Company Time Inc. (Time Warner)
Country United States
Language English
Website www.people.com
ISSN 0093-7673

People (full name People Weekly) is a weekly American magazine of celebrity and human interest stories, published by Time Inc. As of 2006, it has a circulation of 3.75 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] 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, a ratio it has maintained, according to its editors,[citation needed] since 2001.a[›] 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."[1]

People has a website, http://www.people.com, which focuses exclusively on celebrity news.[2] 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.[3]

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

The magazine maintains editorial bureaus in New York City, Los Angeles and London.[1][2]

Contents

[edit] History

People was co-founded by Dick Durrell[4] 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."[5]

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.[1] 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.[6] 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.

Later, 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 with immediate effect. The last issue to be released was for September 2006.[7] 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.[8] 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 explains 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?"[9]

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.

[edit] 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]

Recently, "Dancing with the Stars" host Samantha Harris decided to share the news of her pregnancy with People, even before she announced it on her own show. Harris said she "ideally wanted a prestigious magazine to be the one to break it," Harris tells FBLA. " People breaks a lot of baby news and seems to be a reliable source. Plus, I've never had a chance to be in People, and it was nice that they wanted to break it."[10]

Recently Jennifer Lopez decided to sell photos of her twin newborn babies (a boy and girl) for $6 million to People Magazine.[citation needed]

[edit] Awards

  • 100 Most Beautiful People (formerly 50 Most Beautiful People until 2006) - This award was originally given to the 50 most beautiful celebrities (both male and female) but has now been doubled to 100. The first cover person was Michelle Pfeiffer.
  • Hottest Hollywood Bachelors

[edit] Sexiest Man Alive

Currently an annual feature, the Sexiest Man Alive designation by the magazine 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."[11]

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 34
1987-03-30 Harry Hamlin 35
1988-09-12 John F. Kennedy, Jr. 27 Longest gap between selections: eighteen months. Only winner now deceased. Was the youngest winner. Only non-actor to win.
1989-12-16 Sean Connery 59 Oldest winner
1990-07-23 Tom Cruise 28
1991-07-23 Patrick Swayze 39
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 (previous win was shared)
2000-11-13 Brad Pitt 36 First solo two-time winner
2001-11-26 Pierce Brosnan 48
2002-12-02 Ben Affleck 30
2003-12-01 Johnny Depp 40
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 [12][13]

[edit] Best selling issues

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ a: The ratio, according to Variety, is 53% to 47%.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. ^ 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>
  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. ^ Teen People magazine closes, but website will still continue
  8. ^ http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_6217.asp Medialifemagazine.com
  9. ^ TeenPeople.com to Merge Into People.com
  10. ^ mediabistro.com: FishbowlLA
  11. ^ Argetsinger, Amy; Roberts, Roxanne (November 19, 2007), "Matt Damon??!!! We Demand to Differ!". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-01-31
  12. ^ No byline (2007-11-26), "The Sexiest Man Alive". People. 68 (22):70 Retrieved 2008-01-31
  13. ^ No byline (2006-11-27), "EXCLUSIVE! GEORGE REVEALS His Pick for Sexiest Man Alive". People. 66 (22):80 Retrieved 2008-01-31

[edit] External links


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