Staffers at People — a 48-year-old fixture in grocery checkout lines, beauty salons and doctor’s offices known for its “Sexiest Man Alive” cover — are bracing for the magazine to go online-only after Dotdash Meredith, a unit of billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC, shuttered a slew of print publications, reports The NY Post citing sources close to the situation said.
Those include Entertainment Weekly and the fashion glossy InStyle, which once oozed profit and was thick with advertising pages. People, meanwhile, faces getting the ax despite claiming the largest audience of any US magazine for nearly a decade until 2018, when it surrendered the title to AARP.
“I think it’s a goner,” one well-placed source said of People’s weekly edition. The source added that execs are instead mulling monthly or quarterly editions, as well as special-themed issues which carry a much higher cover price.
“The new editor doesn’t know what she’s doing. Staff in the editorial meetings are texting each other and rolling their eyes when she talks.”
The Post has also learned that DotDash Meredith execs quietly cut People’s circulation from 3.4 million to 2.5 million, as well as the number of pages per magazine by about eight. One insider explained that the subs that were cut are free or low cost subscriptions that do not justify the price of mailing the issues out.
Dotdash Meredith spokesperson said: “Outside of People magazine’s rate base change of 3.4 to 2.5 million — which was shared with advertisers in April of this year — and a temporary change to total pages due to the international paper shortage, the claims and numbers provided by an unnamed source for this story are completely false.
“People magazine will continue to publish weekly, as it has for nearly 50 years, and benefit from the significant investments we continue to make in People’s brand and products,” the spokesperson added.
While talks of changes in frequency are in flux and a decision has not been made, insiders fret that People’s editorial offices are in disarray under the magazine’s new editor in chief Liz Vaccariello, who replaced Dan Wakeford amid a February reorganization. Vaccariello, who held top jobs at Real Simple, Parents, Reader’s Digest and Every Day with Rachael Ray, is filling the magazine with “soft stories,” a source said.
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