People (magazine)
People is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by People Inc., 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 Ages annual "A-list" and number 3 on Adweeks "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
Peoples 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 & 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.
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. Peoples 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, Sam Angeloff and Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. ; writers James Watters and Ronald B. Scott ; former Time senior editor Richard Burgheim ; 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: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 Times 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. Since 1997, the dates have settled between mid-November and early December. Denzel Washington was the first racialized winner, and Jonathan Bailey was the first openly LGBTQ+ winner.
Dates of magazine issues, winners, ages of winners at the time of selection, and pertinent comments are listed below.
, former winners John F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Connery, and Patrick Swayze have since died. Kennedy and David Beckham are the only non-entertainers to have won the accolade.
| Year | Choice | Age |
| Mel Gibson | 29 | |
| Mark Harmon | 34 | |
| Harry Hamlin | 35 | |
| John F. Kennedy Jr. | 28 | |
| Sean Connery | 59 | |
| Tom Cruise | 27 | |
| Patrick Swayze | 38 | |
| Nick Nolte | 51 | |
| Richard Gere | 44 | |
| Cindy Crawford | 27 | |
| 1994 | Keanu Reeves | 30 |
| Brad Pitt | 32 | |
| Denzel Washington | 41 | |
| George Clooney | 36 | |
| Harrison Ford | 56 | |
| Richard Gere | 50 | |
| Brad Pitt | 37 | |
| Pierce Brosnan | 48 | |
| Ben Affleck | 30 | |
| Johnny Depp | 40 | |
| Jude Law | 31 | |
| 36 | ||
| George Clooney | 45 | |
| Matt Damon | 37 | |
| Hugh Jackman | 40 | |
| Johnny Depp | 46 | |
| Ryan Reynolds | 34 | |
| Bradley Cooper | 36 | |
| Channing Tatum | 32 | |
| Adam Levine | 34 | |
| Chris Hemsworth | 31 | |
| David Beckham | 40 | |
| Dwayne Johnson | 44 | |
| Blake Shelton | 41 | |
| Idris Elba | 46 | |
| John Legend | 40 | |
| Michael B. Jordan | 33 | |
| Paul Rudd | 52 | |
| Chris Evans | 41 | |
| 7 11 2023 | Patrick Dempsey | 57 |
| November 13, 2024 | John Krasinski | 45 |
| November 3, 2025 | Jonathan Bailey | 37 |