“Magazines and the Celebrity Culture:
Oprah and Rosie and Martha, Oh My!”

by Sammye Johnson
Carlos Augustus de Lozano Professor of Journalism
Department of Communication
Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

INTRODUCTION    

            One hallmark of the late twentieth century has been the increasing coverage of celebrities and the resulting celebrity culture.  In 1991, James Autry, former editor of Better Homes and Gardens, observed that celebrity journalism, a phrase he says was coined by the founding managing editor of People magazine in 1974, was “informing the way magazines were done.” [1]   Autry noticed that “celebrity journalism began to invade fashion, news, sports, service — everything — so that you didn’t just have a rose magazine about growing roses, you had ‘Charlton Heston Shows You How to Grow Roses.’” [2]   Autry added:   

                        Look at the magazines that have started up to do nothing but

                        celebrity journalism:  People, Us, Vanity Fair, Entertainment

                        Weekly.  Then consider other magazines like Ladies’ Home

                        Journal.  We have to find “who’s hot.”  Is it going to be Elizabeth      

                        Taylor?  Is it going to be Princess Di?  Kevin Costner?  All this

                        has to do with selling magazines.  Interestingly enough, very

                        little of Ladies’ Home Journal has to do with anything other

                        than service, advice about personal issues, relationships and

                        parenting, as well as the fashions and foods and other things

                        that go into service magazines.  But we’re always going to

                        have at least one feature on a celebrity and that celebrity is

                        going to be on the cover.  Because that magazine is competing

                        on the newsstand with all the other magazines that have

                        celebrities on the cover. [3]

            The interest in celebrities is at an all-time high and shows no sign of waning.  Where models once dominated fashion magazine covers, now Hollywood actresses are found on the covers of Vogue , Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar.  According to columnist Ellen Goodman, there’s been “a generational transition from a country that looked up to heroes to a country that gaped at celebrities.” [4]

CELEBRITY CULTURE    

            The very existence of People’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list — all are celebrities — symbolizes a significant aspect of American culture.  It emphasizes the cosmetic, celebrates physical looks over substance, and presents the country with a definition of contemporary beauty as being thin, sexy, and young.  If this trend is going to change, America’s appetite for celebrity news will have to weaken.

            Celebrity journalism is more than just putting a movie star on the cover of a magazine.  There are magazine editors who become celebrities, celebrities who become magazine editors, and celebrities who start their own magazines.  This results in a celebrity culture that transcends cover images to involve editorial content and balance.

Magazine Editors Who Become Celebrities

            The celebrity magazine editor has been around for a long time.  Edward Bok, editor of Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889 to 1919, made it a point, he wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning third-person autobiography, “to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not merely write on paper.” [5]   Prior to Bok, editors used the indefinite and lofty “we” for their editorial comments.  Bok, who used the first person singular and talked directly to readers, understood that the “American public loved a personality and was always ready to recognize and follow a leader, provided, of course, that the qualities of leadership were demonstrated.” [6]

            In recent years, Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker, and Helen Gurley Brown, former editor of Cosmopolitan, were celebrities in their own right — capable of creating media buzz and reader interest when they were away from the office.  After Tina Brown left The New Yorker in 1998 to create Talk magazine in a multimedia venture with Miramax Films, the buzz continued.  Days before the magazine’s August 1999 launch, media critic Alex Kuczynski wrote that “gossip columns have hummed with news of the magazine’s most intimate, even inane, interior workings” for months. [7]   “You can never, never underestimate the fundamental level of interest there is in Tina,” said Ronald A. Galotti, Talk’s publisher. [8]  

            Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, and Martha Stewart, founder of Martha Stewart Living, are two current editors who have instant recognition as a result of the media empires that grew out of their magazine ventures.  They both became famous after their magazines took off, with the result that Hefner and Stewart are their magazines, living out the advice and information provided inside each issue.  Hefner, despite his age (over 70), is still the quintessential playboy, while Stewart has built a cult of personality that seems to have no end in sight.  Neither Hefner nor Stewart have to appear on the cover each month in order to reinforce the brand.  In fact, “Martha Stewart Living, with its circulation of 2.3 million and Ms. Stewart’s legions of fans, is the benchmark by which other name-brand magazines are measured.” [9]

            Publicist Don Klores, whose New York City public relations firm represents New York magazine and Esquire, among others, said celebrity editors who are invited to upscale functions and who host elaborate parties themselves makes things easier all around:  “It makes ad sales easier, it’s easier to get people to say, ‘Yes, I’ll do that interview.’” [10]

            Magazines such as People and Vanity Fair write about celebrity editors and journalists, and their names appear on society pages and in gossip columns.   The editor as celebrity has led some critics to wonder if ugly — or non-photogenic — people need not apply for the top editor-in-chief slot at magazines.  Elizabeth Crow, former editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle, observed that “non-photogenic editors, editors who are severely overweight, might be a problem in some marketers’ eyes.” [11]

            Folio:’s November 15, 1997 article asking “Is There a Place for the Shy or Homely Editor?” received a blistering reply from Lucy T. Avera, associate publisher and editor of Asphalt Contractor, who wrote, “On a personal level, as the overweight female associate publisher/editor of a trade book representing a $15 billion industry dominated by men, I think the fact that you consider an editor’s attractiveness a factor in his or her ability to perform specific job duties is discriminatory, shallow, and insulting.”  Avera continued, “For Folio: to plant such a discriminatory seed by making physical and personal attributes (or lack thereof) an issue is a disservice to our industry.” [12]

            Barbara Love, editor of the “Folio: Plus” column where the article ran, responded simply that the item reflects reality today, adding, “Of course attractiveness should not be a factor in hiring an editor, nor should it be a factor in judging editors already in place.  The item was intended to convey what is (at some titles) and not what should be.” [13]

            The magazine editor as celebrity certainly isn’t the biggest problem facing the magazine industry today.  Journalism reformer James Fallows, former editor of U. S. World and News Reports, says, “I don’t think I’d put [this kind of] celebrity journalism on the top five list of major problems for journalism right now.  By definition, it only affects an elite.  But it is a problem because it aggravates other sources of people being mad at us — and therefore not listening to what we say or do.” [14]  

Celebrities Who Become Magazine Editors           

            The synergy between celebrities and magazines seems to be at an all-time high, with an increasing number of movie stars serving as guest editors for a single issue or as ongoing contributing editors.  Some magazine observers say the current fascination with celebrities in a journalistic environment dates back to the Watergate affair, which changed journalism in more ways than we realize.  The modern era of the journalist as celebrity began as a result of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigative reporting of President Richard Nixon that led to his resignation in 1974. [15]   The 1976 movie, “All the President’s Men,” featuring sexy Robert Redford and cerebral Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein respectively, launched the public’s fascination with the journalist as celebrity.  If movie stars could play reporters and editors on screen, why couldn’t movie stars actually be magazine editors as well?

            Marie Claire, for women in the 18-to-30 age bracket, has been particularly active in its use of guest editors.  After actress Gwyneth Paltrow oversaw the magazine’s editorial content, including design and layout, for one issue, Marie Claire’s editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey said, “Gwyneth has a great sense of style, a sense of humor and a sense of justice.  Her intelligence and integrity make her the  ideal guest editor.” [16]   Others who have served as guest editors at Marie Claire include Demi Moore and Susan Sarandon.

            Almost the entire September 1998 issue of Jane was done by such celebrities as George Clooney, David Cassidy, Halle Berry, Yasmine Bleeth, Mariah Carey, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Campbell, Maxwell, Vivica Fox, R.E.M., and Ben Stiller, who interviewed his “There’s Something About Mary” co-star Cameron Diaz.

            It’s not just women’s magazines that make use of guest editors.  TV comedian Roseanne helped with The New Yorker’s  February 26 and March 4, 1996 combined issue focusing on women.  Popular Mechanics hired popular late night television host and car buff Jay Leno as a bimonthly contributing editor in 1999; his first column was “Confessions of a Car Addict.”  Sean Penn has been a contributing editor for Interview for several years. 

            Historian Daniel Boorstin offers a context for the magazine editor as celebrity journalism factor: “Journalists are the creators of well-knownness.  In the process of creating well-knownness for others, it’s not surprising that some of them become celebrities too.  It’s inevitable.” [17]  

Celebrities Who Start Magazines    

            Adding to the celebrity culture are the handful of celebrities who start their own magazines.  In 1997, comedian Milton Berle launched Milton, a glossy quarterly about gambling, smoking, and drinking.  In the spring of 1999, Ivana Trump’s magazine, Ivana’s Living in Style, hit the newsstands.  Trump’s quarterly deals with fashion (she’s in the front row at all the designer shows), relationships (she’s been married three times), and homemaking (she has three children and several homes).      

            The late John F. Kennedy, Jr. resisted the celebrity impulse to name his magazine after himself (although John-John would have adored him to millions of women) or to have it totally revolve around his lifestyle.  Kennedy started George in 1995 as a magazine that focused on politics, public policy issues, and political power; it was a “post-partisan magazine that would define politics broadly — from elected officials to media moguls to movie stars to ordinary citizens — and cover it exuberantly.” [18]  

            Although George was criticized for following a celebrity formula on its cover and inside its pages, the magazine seemed to be doing well, deriving a lot of pizzazz from Kennedy’s hands-on involvement.  However, after Kennedy’s death in a plane crash in July 1999, media watchers immediately began asking whether George could survive.  Media critic Ken Auletta said, “I would think that John is central to the magazine — his persona and appeal.  It’s been held together by his being there . . .  it’s been a surprisingly good magazine compared to what it could have been, and he’s done a job he and his friends and family can be proud of.” [19]      

            Unfortunately, since its 1995 launch with Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, George had been losing money — $4 million a year.  At the time of Kennedy’s death, ad pages were down 30 percent in the first six months of 1999 compared to the previous year and newsstand sales were off by more than 28 percent, although total paid circulation was down just 5 percent from a year earlier. [20]   The perils of having a magazine whose cachet revolved around its founder were made clear by Jack Kliger, president of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, who said there had never been “a cohesive marketing strategy stated beyond the personal magnetism of John.” [21]         

            Hachette Filipacchi spent $10 million to buy out the Kennedy family stake in George and continued the magazine under editor Frank Lalli.  Lalli added “something rarely found in the Kennedy years: solid, well-reported, well-written articles, many of them bringing a much-needed historical perspective” to the basic George formula of “glitzy graphics and Top Ten lists and plenty of movie stars.” [22]   Although readers responded to the change — circulation went up 25 percent — advertisers didn’t.  The magazine’s last issue, a special tribute to Kennedy, was published in March 2001.

            According to Kliger, George couldn’t survive without John: “There was a product that went out beyond John, but the advertisers had always associated it with John Kennedy.  It was a political/lifestyle magazine, but we had a hell of a ghost to always be compared to.” [23]

            Teen lifestyle magazines are among the most successful niches these days, so it’s no surprise that teen celebrities are starting their own publications.  Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the television sitcom twins, launched Mary-Kate and Ashley in April 2001.  The lifestyle magazine includes thoughtful articles about school violence as well as “real talk for real girls” about clothes, cosmetics, dating, and boys.  Robert Thorne, co-editor of the magazine (he’s listed third after Mary-Kate and Ashley) said, “Girls don’t just want to meet Mary-Kate and Ashley, they want to be them.” [24]   The wholesome Olsen twins, who have a merchandising and media empire that rivals Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, have successfully tapped into the hot teen market.            

            The top celebrity launch of recent years is Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, O, which debuted in May 2000 and reached an unheard-of circulation of 1 million subscribers in less than six months, passing such well established magazines as Vogue (681,000) and Self (786,000). [25]   After just two issues, O’s newsstand sales averaged 1.5 million copies, more than the average newsstand sales of Vogue, Self, and Martha Stewart Living combined. [26]   “Oprah is one of the premier communicators of this century and is a woman of unparalleled inspiration as television host, philanthropist, Academy Award-nominated actress, businesswoman, and role model,” said Cathleen Black, president of Hearst Magazines, which bankrolled the project with Winfrey’s HARPO Entertainment Group. [27]  

            O “is now considered by many magazine executives and advertisers to be the most successful new magazine in decades,” said New York Times media critic Alex Kuczynski.  She continued, “Some editors believe O’s success is due solely to Ms. Winfrey’s popularity, that you could slap her picture on a blank book and it would still fly off supermarket shelves.” [28]   Although O guarantees a circulation of 1.3 million to advertisers, it has sold as many as 3 million copies per issue. [29]  

            The most interesting wrinkle in the celebrity magazine start-up category occurred this spring when Rosie O’Donnell took over the 125-year-old McCall’s.  A 50-50 joint venture with Gruner & Jahr, the magazine was going to be known as Rosie’s McCall’s and would be a revamping of the editorial content and design.  As editorial director, O’Donnell said she would be involved in day-to-day operations, but not the sole editorial focus.  “I didn’t have the desire to make a Rosie magazine,” O’Donnell said shortly after the announcement of the venture.  “I’m a person.  I don’t want to be the product.”  She added that the “Rosie” in the logo would be smaller than the “McCall’s” and that she would not be on the cover of every issue as Oprah Winfrey has. [30]

            By May 2001, when the first issue hit the newsstands, the magazine was Rosie, a dark, melancholy publication compared to the old McCall’s, which was officially folded.  At the outset O’Donnell said the magazine, with an already established 3.6 million subscribers, “will have less spirituality than Oprah’s and be more realistically craftsy than Martha Stewart’s magazine, with a lot more of my annoyingly Democratic politics in the middle.” [31]   That was true, with the first issue having “more editorial space on politically and emotionally charged issues like gun violence, addiction and crippling illnesses than most women’s magazines do in a year.” [32]  

            So far, Rosie has been a newsstand hit, with sales of 900,000, 600,000 and 700,000 for the first three issues, compared to an average of 365,333 for McCall’s. [33]   However, advertising pages were mixed, up for the first three issues compared to McCall’s, but down for August and September 2001 issues. [34]

Initially, O’Donnell appeared on each cover, though not as the central figure; she stood behind TV comedienne Fran Drescher on the first Rosie and shared space with other celebrities in subsequent issues.  Only the July 2001 cover featured O’Donnell solo — an untraditional and unglamorous shot showing her looking grim in a robe with her bandaged hand held up to highlight her first person “Staph Is No Laugh” article.  That turned out to be the best selling cover since the launch, selling more than 800,000 copies on the newsstands35

            Unlike Winfrey, O’Donnell said she hates photo shoots: “I think it is the worst part of being a celebrity.  I’d be perfectly happy never to be on the cover.”36  She skipped the November 2001 and December 2001 covers of Rosie, which featured Drew Barrymore and John Travolta, respectively.

            A potential problem for Rosie’s continued success is O’Donnell’s decision to let her television talk show contract expire in June 2002.  Martha Stewart Living and O have benefited greatly from their founders’ ongoing television presence.  “Certainly, if Rosie’s television show and name were going to benefit the magazine, her being off television will mean that luster will wear off over time.  And it will probably wear off rather quickly.  Publishing companies are traditionally loath to rely on the kindness of strangers to keep their star editors in the public eye,” said John Klingel, worldwide circulation director for Reader's Digest and a member of the Time Inc. Ventures team that launched the first issue of Martha Stewart Living.37

Celebrity Coverage
             Magazines have set the tone for society’s approach toward celebrities.  According to former People managing editor and former Time editor James Gaines, “Your cover defines you in popular perception.”38  Because of this, people remember cover images.  Consequently, the choice of who or what to feature on the cover is not only an editorial content decision, but also can be viewed as a social indicator of where any individual or group in society is today in terms of importance and value.

            A panel made up of design consultant John Peter, circulation consultant Ron Scott, and Hearst Magazines Enterprises president John Mack Carter, who has been editor-in-chief at both Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, offered the following cover bromides:

                        •Photos sell better than artwork.

                         •Sex sells better than politics.

                        •Timeliness is a critical sales factor.

                        •Solutions sell better than problems.

                        •Subtlety and irony don’t sell.

                        •Bylines don’t sell.

                        •Puns don’t work well in sell lines.39

            Publishers want a magazine cover that sells out at the newsstands and creates media buzz: A sexy photo of a current celebrity is going to be a winner these days.  “The business of editorial demands that we pay as much attention to our covers as we do to our content,” said David Pecker when he was president and CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines.  “Remember the old adage, ‘You can’t tell a book by its cover’?  Well, you can’t sell a magazine anymore without a good one.”40  Pecker argued that since 80 percent of consumer magazines’ newsstand sales are determined by what is shown on the cover, a cover that sells can mean the difference between a magazine’s life or death.

            Speaking of the need for a cover with a persona who grabs the newsstand browser, Richard Stolley, former managing editor of People and now senior editorial advisor at Time Inc. Magazines, said, “The face had to be recognizable to 80 percent of the American people.  There had to be a reason for the person on the cover.  There had to be something happening in the person’s life the week it was out there.  And then there was this X factor.  There had to be something about that person that you wanted to know.”41

            The quest for a recognizable X-face has led to more and more celebrities appearing on magazine covers.  But not just any celebrity will do.  Stolley pointed out that Mary Tyler Moore was never a successful cover subject, even when she was at the pinnacle of her television success.  “There was nothing left of interest about her that people did not already know,” he said.  “They loved her, but that wasn’t enough for People’s cover.”42

            Stolley, who is recognized as a cover guru by his peers, said that when he was at People, the cover mantra went: “Young is better than old.  Pretty is better than ugly.  Rich is better than poor.  TV is better than music.  Music is better than movies.  Movies are better than sports.  Anything is better than politics.  And nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”43

            Time magazine’s best selling cover of all time featured Princess Diana in a commemorative issue following her tragic death in 1997.  That “celebrity dead” issue sold more than 1 million copies on the newsstands.  In fact, of Time’s five top-selling newsstand issues, four had celebrities as the cover story (see Appendix A).  Two had cover images of the former Princess of Wales (the commemorative issue and the one published immediately after the news of her accident).  The issue about Diana’s automobile accident and death sold more than 800,000 copies.  Selling more than half a million copies each on the newsstands were issues about John Lennon’s murder in 1980 and Michael Jackson and his hot new album “Thriller” in 1984.  The only hard news story of significant national impact that sold more than 500,000 copies on the newsstands was Ford’s pardon of Nixon in 1974, titled “The Healing Begins.”44

            In contrast, five of the least popular Time covers since 1980 featured topics of significant concern for national and international readers (see Appendix A).  These particular issues sold only about 100,000 copies on the newsstands.  They featured cover stories about nuclear safety in 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, the 1994 baseball strike, the renaissance in black culture in 1994, and Clinton’s concerns about Bosnia in 1993.45  Yet these issues did not attract newsstand buyers; these issues bombed at the newsstands. 

            Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., admitted that readers are less interested in international news and even hard national news: “There’s always been a balance between educating your reader and serving your reader, but we’re not getting a lot of demand for international coverage these days in broad consumer publications.  You obviously balance telling them what you think they ought to read with giving them what they want to read, and that balance has clearly shifted away from international news in the last decade.”46       

            But Ray Cave, former managing editor of Time, said it’s a cop-out simply to say people aren’t interested in substantive international and national news.  “The general public has never been interested in it.  But we delivered it, like it or not.  By so doing, we piqued public interest in the very matters that must, to some degree, interest the citizens of a democracy,” Cave said.47

            But for many of the citizens of the American democracy, the hot magazine these days is Time Inc.’s In Style, which, for all practical purposes, is a homage to celebrities — movie stars, pop singers, sitcom stars, and talk show hosts.  Popular with both readers — it’s grown from its 1994 circulation launch base of 500,000 to more than 1.5 million by the end of 2000 — and advertisers, In Style doesn’t offer self-help and never hints at imperfection.  Instead, the magazine stresses the bond that readers feel with movie stars.  “If you put 20 models in a row, and 20 movie stars in a row, your reader will more closely identify with the movie star.  They have more variety, and they exude more personalities.  Readers think they know their personalities.  If I say Ally McBeal, you think: ‘I know her; I know what she’s about; I know what her life might be like.’  You can’t say the same thing about Kate Moss,” said managing editor Martha Nelson.48

CONCLUSION
             In the next decade, we can expect to see a continuation of “accessible escapism” through celebrity journalism.  Publishers have noticed that celebrities sell magazines and that putting a celebrity’s name in the title can be extremely profitable from the start.  Magazines reflect the interests of their readers, while also shaping the general tenor of the times.  Americans seem to be obsessed with celebrities these days; they don’t seem to mind the blurring of reality and fiction that occurs with a celebrity culture.

             However, the reading public is fickle.  As Klingel observed, “Celebrity research for magazine covers raises another unsettling point.  We know that popularity figures rise and fail quite quickly regards to lack of exposure.”49 

Appendix A

Cover Hits and Misses at Time

Five Most Popular Newsstand Issues50                   

DATE                               COVER SUBJECT                                COPIES SOLD

September 15, 1997         Princess Diana                                          1,183,758
                                        “Commemorative Issue”  

September 8, 1997           Princess Diana                                            802,838     
                                        “Diana, Princess of Wales 1961-1997"

August 19, 1974               President Gerald R. Ford                            564,723 
                                         "The Healing Begins”  
                                         (following resignation of Nixon)

December 22, 1980         John Lennon                                                531,340  
                                        “When the Music Died” (death of Lennon)

  March 19, 1984              Michael Jackson                                        500,290 
                                         “Why He’s a Thriller: Inside His World”

Five Least Popular Newsstand Issues Since 198051

DATE                         COVER SUBJECT                             COPIES SOLD

October 10, 1994         Choreographer Bill T. Jones                         100,827
                                    “Black Renaissance ”

August 22, 1994           Baseball umpire (generic drawing)                101,125"
                                    Stree-rike!” (baseball strike)      

May 17, 1993               President Bill Clinton with worried                102,193    
                                     Lyndon B. Johnson in background
                                     “Anguish over Bosnia: Will It Be  
                                     Clinton’s Vietnam?”

March 4, 1996              Nuclear engineer George Galatis                 108,900
                                      “Blowing the Whistle on Nuclear Safety”

June 10, 1996                Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  109,300    
                                     “Can He Make Peace?”

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