Along with the titillating question of whether Jessica Simpson might reunite with her former husband, Nick Lachey, the news coming out of Us Weekly this week is the departure of editor Janice Min, who levitated Jann Wenner's gossip rag into a phenomenon, inspiring a new generation of celebrity-obsessed publications that have gobbled up American newsstands.
At Us, Min, who says she is leaving amicably to explore other career paths, has been an influential tastemaker, particularly by forging readers' relationships with reality TV stars such as Jon & Kate and Heidi & Spencer. Before Us Weekly lavished eight covers on the squabbling Gosselins of "Jon & Kate Plus 8," they were just the stars of a little-seen TLC show. Afterward, nearly 10 million people tuned in for the season premiere that addressed their marital troubles.
Speaking on the phone from her office in New York City, Min, who is leaving when her contract expires Aug. 1, says her star-making strategy, specific to reality television, has been to target a "roaming pack" of "13 million women avidly involved in pop culture."
Min says: "We broke that story at a time when most people had never heard of Jon and Kate. Now they wish they had never heard of Jon and Kate. That's the impact of Us."
Although Min's predecessor, Bonnie Fuller, created much of the template of the revamped Us Weekly -- paparazzi shots and "scoops" on Hollywood hookups and breakups -- Min honed the formula and rode the undulating waves of popular taste.
When she took the helm six years ago, a celebrity was a movie star or someone with a sitcom. "Now sitcoms barely exist," says Min. "Thanks to cable television, reality TV and the Internet, the whole power structure of celebrity has shifted. It's not just that Kim Kardashian is a celebrity and nobody knows why. It's her sister, her mother. Young women in particular have forged a connection with the stars of reality TV that they don't have with Gwyneth Paltrow.
"The whole relationship dynamic between the general population and celebrity has morphed into a belief that there's very little separating you from being like them."
Min has also overseen most of Us Weekly's spectacular growth. It went from a circulation of 800,000 in 2000 to 1.9 million today, second in the category to People's 3 million readers. Ad pages soared during her tenure, though they fell for the last two years, according to Publishers Information Bureau. They were down almost 10% in the first six months of this year, a figure, however, that remains significantly less than the 28% fall-off in the consumer magazine industry as a whole.
