American weekly magazine
People is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC. With a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, "People" had the largest audience of any American magazine, but it fell to second place in 2018 after its readership significantly declined to 35.9 million. "People" had $997 million in advertising revenue in 2011, the highest advertising revenue of any American magazine. In 2006, it had a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion. It was named "Magazine of the Year" by "Advertising Age" in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation, and advertising. "People" ranked number 6 on "Advertising Age"'s annual "A-list" and number 3 on "Adweek"'s "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
"People"'s website, People.com, focuses on celebrity and crime news, royal updates, fashion and lifestyle recommendations and human interest stories.
"People" is perhaps best known for its yearly special issues naming the "World's Most Beautiful", "Best &amp; Worst Dressed", and "Sexiest Man Alive". The magazine's headquarters are in New York City, and it maintains editorial bureaus in Los Angeles and in London. In 2006, for financial reasons, it closed bureaus in Austin, Miami, and Chicago.
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History.
Andrew Heiskell, who was the chief executive officer of Time Inc. at the time and the former publisher of the weekly "Life" magazine, is credited with coming up with the idea for "People". The founding managing editor of "People" was Richard Stolley, a former assistant managing editor at "Life" and the journalist who acquired the Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination for Time Inc. in 1963. "People"'s first publisher was Richard J. "Dick" Durrell, another Time Inc. veteran.
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." Stolley's almost religious determination to keep the magazine people-focused contributed significantly to its rapid early success. It is said that although Time Inc. pumped an estimated $40 million into the venture, the magazine only broke even 18 months after its debut on February 25, 1974. Initially, the magazine was sold primarily on newsstands and in supermarkets. To get the magazine out each week, founding staff members regularly slept on the floor of their offices two or three nights each week and severely limited all non-essential outside engagements. The premiere edition for the week ending March 4, 1974, featured actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the film "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 were missing in action. The magazine was, apart from its cover, printed in black-and-white. The initial cover price was 35 cents ().
The core of the small founding editorial team included other editors, writers, photographers and photo editors from "Life" magazine, which had ceased publication just 13 months earlier. This group included managing editor Stolley, senior editors Hal Wingo (father of ESPN anchor Trey Wingo), Sam Angeloff (the founding managing editor of "Us" magazine) and Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. (a former "Life" writer and also a film and television producer); writers James Watters (a theater reviewer) and Ronald B. Scott (later a biographer of presidential candidate Mitt Romney); former "Time" senior editor Richard Burgheim (later the founder of "Time"'s ill-fated cable television magazine "View"); Chief of Photography, a "Life" photographer, John Loengard, to be succeeded by John Dominus, a noteworthy "Life" staff photographer; and design artist Bernard Waber, author, and illustrator of the "Lyle The Crocodile" book series for children. Many of the noteworthy "Life" photographers contributed to the magazine as well, including legends Alfred Eisenstaedt and Gjon Mili and rising stars Co Rentmeester, David Burnett and Bill Eppridge. Other members of the first editorial staff included editors and writers Ross Drake, Ralph Novak, Bina Bernard, James Jerome, Sally Moore, Mary Vespa, Lee Wohlfert, Joyce Wansley, Curt Davis, Clare Crawford-Mason, and Jed Horne, later an editor of "The Times-Picayune" in New Orleans.
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 murdered Tejano singer Selena and the other featuring the hit television series "Friends"; the Selena cover sold out while the other did not. Although the original idea was that Spanish-language translations of articles from the English magazine would comprise half the content, "People en Español" over time came to have entirely original content.
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 spring 2017, People Stylewatch was rebranded as PeopleStyle. In late 2017, it was announced that there would no longer be a print version of PeopleStyle and it would be a digital-only publication.
In Australia, the localized version of "People" is titled "Who" since there was already another magazine published under the title "People". The international edition of "People" has been published in Greece since 2010.
On July 26, 2013, Outlook Group announced that it was closing down the Indian edition of "People", which began publication in 2008.
In September 2016, in collaboration with "Entertainment Weekly", "People" launched the People/Entertainment Weekly Network. The "free, ad-supported online-video network... covering celebrities, pop culture, lifestyle and human-interest stories", was rebranded as PeopleTV in September 2017.
In December 2016, LaTavia Roberson engaged in a feud with "People" after alleging they misquoted and misrepresented her interview online.
Meredith purchased Time Inc., including "People", in 2017. In 2019, "People" editor Jess Cagle announced he was stepping down from his role. It was later announced he would be replaced by deputy editor Dan Wakeford, who previously worked for "In Touch Weekly". Liz Vaccariello was named the new Editor in Chief on February 23, 2022, replacing Dan Wakeford.
On October 6, 2021, Dotdash agreed to purchase Meredith, which still owned "People" and sister magazines such as "Entertainment Weekly", "InStyle", and "Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Journal", in a $2.7 billion deal. The purchase would be finalized on December 1, 2021.
"Teen People".
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens, called "Teen People". However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced that it would shut down publication of "Teen People" immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. In exchange, subscribers to this magazine received "Entertainment Weekly" for the rest of their subscriptions. 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, and a decrease in circulation numbers. 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. On the decision to merge the brands, he stated, "We've got traffic on TeenPeople, People is a larger site, why not combine and have the teen traffic going to one place?"
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:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;They are among the largest 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.
"People" reportedly paid $4.1 million for photos of newborn Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The photos set a single-day traffic record for their website, attracting 26.5 million page views.
Sexiest Man Alive.
The annual feature the "Sexiest Man Alive" is billed as a benchmark of male attractiveness and typically includes only famous people. It is determined using a procedure similar to the procedure used for "Time"'s Person of the Year. The origin of the title was a discussion on a planned story on Mel Gibson. Someone exclaimed, "Oh my God, he is the sexiest man alive!" And someone else said, "You should use that as a cover line."
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 (21 years later the magazine did select Keanu Reeves to fill the 1994 gap, with runners-up including Hugh Grant and Jim Carrey). 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.
As of 2022[ [update]], former winners John F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Connery, and Patrick Swayze have since died. Kennedy Jr. and David Beckham are the only non-entertainers to have won the accolade.
Sexiest Woman Alive.
In December 2014, "People" selected its first and only Sexiest Woman Alive, Kate Upton. Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere were declared "Sexiest Couple of the Year" on October 19, 1993.
Cutest Baby Alive.
In 2019, "People" selected its first Cutest Baby Alive, Andy Cohen's son Benjamin. In 2020, Anderson Cooper's son, Wyatt Morgan, was named the Cutest Baby Alive.
Most Intriguing People of the Year.
At the end of each year "People" magazine famously selects 25 news-making individuals or couples who have received much media attention over the past 12 months and showcases them in a special year-end issue, the '25 Most Intriguing People of the Year'. This series of full-page features and half-page featurettes includes world leaders and political activists, famous actors and entertainers, elite athletes, prominent business people, accomplished scientists and occasionally members of the public whose stories have made an unusual impact in news or tabloid media.
100 Most Beautiful People.
"People"'s 100 Most Beautiful People is an annual list of 100 people judged to be the most beautiful individuals in the world. Until 2006, it was the 50 Most Beautiful People.
Julia Roberts holds the record for most times named, with five. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Hudson have appeared twice.
In 2020, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, and Hudson's daughter Rani made history becoming the first multigenerational cover stars of the Beautiful Issue. In addition, Hawn and her granddaughter concurrently became the oldest and youngest to cover the Beautiful Issue.
People Magazine Yearbook.
People Magazine Yearbook is an annual publication released by publishers of "People" magazine, currently Meredith Corporation. The Yearbook broadly covers all the major events that happened in the year that it covers. This includes socially relevant news events that made headlines around the world in general but more specifically in the United States. Besides the news headlines, it covers celebrity weddings, splits/divorces, births and deaths, and also scandalous events that generated much news when they happened. Over the years, it has covered headlining events in the world of Music (Grammy Awards), Movies (Oscar Awards, The Golden Globe Awards), and Television (Emmy Awards) in a bite sized recap of the event and the award winners. The People Yearbook has had the year (say, 2010) written in Bold accompanying the word "Yearbook" on the front cover since the People Yearbook 1995, although this gradually changed in the more recent editions. Since 2015, the "year" appeared in a more inconspicuous way on the front cover until the 2019 issue and the bold style of writing the "year" made a comeback in the 2020 issue. The year also appears on the spine.
Early years.
The People Magazine Yearbook was first published in the Year 1991 by The Time Inc. Magazine Company and it was called "Private Lives". This issue did not mention any year conspicuously on the front page or the inner page but the front flap of the hardcover version of the magazine described Private Lives as ""People's" chronicle of an extraordinary year - 1990", clearly describing that the events covered inside were from 1990. Next Year, the 1992 sequel to Private Lives was published and it