The news that Janice Min, 33, was taking over Us Weekly was greeted with considerably less fanfare than the news that Bonnie Fuller was departing the buzzworthy magazine. Min, who had been Fuller’s second in command, inherited the top job at the magazine several weeks ago; it wasn’t until today that The New York Times ran a story trumpeting her arrival. Bonnie, after all, is one of the few first-name-only bold-face editors working these days, what with Tina doing TV and Howell working on books. Mention Janice in a room full of media hangers-on and you’re likely to be greeted with a slightly panicked, confused stare.
Not that she cares a whit.
“I think the hype and the buzz and all the drama surrounding Bonnie’s exit is not something readers outside of New York City media circles care about,” Min said days after Fuller left Us to be the editorial director of American Media, the company best-known for publishing supermarket tabloids like The Star and The National Enquirer. “Readers are interested in something much more instinctive–do they like the magazine? Is there something that compels them to buy it off the newsstand? And I think once the drama of the change settles down readers will find at its core the same magazine they love and the same magazine they find so addictive.”
Early returns show she might have a point. Min’s first two issues both each sold more than half a million copies on the newsstand. Min, who didn’t want to talk specifics about her working relationship with Fuller, is widely credited with being the ego to Fuller’s id. Fuller, after all, was well-known for her outrageous (and occasionally bizarre) ideas–about halfway into her tenure at Us, she tried to gin up a big package on male movie stars’ private parts. Min wouldn’t comment on what she was working on for the future, but she did signal that Us would try to position itself as relatively upmarket in the increasingly crowded celebrity gossip field.
“The reason Us has reached a certain audience is that it’s clever, it’s fun, it’s irreverent,” Min said. “The cleverness and strength of our writing is really important.” Drawing a clear contrast to tabloids like The Star, which Fuller has been charged with revamping, Min said, “We don’t pay for sources. We concentrate on finding news that our readers want to know about. Our readers would not be interested in who is secretly having an abortion or who is a closet alcoholic. The tabs tread an area that would make our readers uncomfortable. We focus on gossip in a good way.” Indeed, one of Us’s best-known photo features is a spread called “Stars–They’re Just Like Us” where you’re more likely to see Cameron Diaz shopping for groceries in a frumpy sweat suit than this month’s newest lothario furtively checking into a Mexican rehab clinic.
It’s likely that the appetite for celebrity-driven magazines is nearing a saturation level. When Fuller took over Us, she was charged with trying to amp up a title that was flailing far behind perennial leader People. Since her success with the Jann Wenner-controlled title, a new weekly glossy, In Touch, was launched in the United States; it also focuses on bright spreads and cheeky gossip. And Fuller seems intent on remaking The Star into a more mainstream title. Frothy gossip glossies seem like this season’s laddie magazines, the latest hot category that causes publishers, lemminglike, to jump off the nearest cliff in search of the watery mirage of Demi and Ashton they see just over the horizon. There’s a finite appeal for any category, something people seem to forget when this or that title suddenly takes off and leaves the rest of the recession-plagued industry looking even more anemic by comparison.
Min is trying not to worry too much about the competition and focusing instead on continuing her title’s success. She’s fine doing that with less fanfare than Fuller. The new editor has spent most of her publishing life at like-minded titles; earlier in her career, she spent a decade at People and was lured to Us by Fuller back in February 2002. “It was so fascinating working with Bonnie,” Min says. “The individual I worked with was never the person that I saw represented in the columns. Bonnie is a very straightforward, demanding boss. It’s hard to pinpoint why certain media figures become so fascinating. Bonnie’s definitely been the editor in chief of more magazines than most people ever will be.”
That’s definitely true. And Min, just out of the gate and running her first title, hopes to emulate her one-time mentor’s success on the newsstand, if not her peripatetic employment history.
