People Magazine Critique

In all honesty this assignment could not come at a better time as I was debating with my friend the other day about what the purpose of buying People Magazine really is. People Magazine is a national print publication that focuses on the entertainment industry and also offers a website. My friend insists on buying the magazine because she says it has more information then the website. I, however, disagree because as a frequent reader of people.com I don’t see much of a difference in the magazine and the website. The biggest difference is that the magazine offers one or two feature stories about non-celebrity related stories. As a frequent reader of people.com I am a big fan of the website. However, I think the fact that they offer almost all the news they feature in their magazine on a daily basis hurts magazine circulation.

As soon as you click on the homepage for people.com all of the major entertainment stories from the day pop up with little blurbs underneath telling what each story is about. These stories are constantly updated throughout the day and the blurb helps visitors choose which stories they want to read. I think the blurbs offered lead to more “info snaking” because people can pick and choose what they want out of an article instead of reading it in its entirety. I think offering these stories online really takes away from the readership of the print publication because there is not much difference between the content on the website and the content in the print publication. In fact, people.com offers a large portion of the front-page article of the print publication every week. In that four to five paragraph “teaser” people.com offers, most people can understand the main points to the story and would have no reason to go out and buy the magazine. I think the fact that people.com offers so many of the stories found throughout its print publication as the stories happen and offer a “teaser” to their cover story hurts more than helps their print circulation.

Another thing that hurts People’s print circulation is the amount of photos offered on people.com in comparison to the print publication. Everyday people.com offers a photo gallery of celebrity sightings consisting on anywhere from 10 to 20 photos. In the weekly print publication only a handful of the photos that appear in all the galleries from the week are featured with the same explanation that is offered on the website. People.com also keeps an archive of all the daily photo galleries so that visitors can go back to look at any of the posted photos. I think the lack of variety and surprise in the photos offered in the print publication really takes away from the circulation of the print publication. If anyone can access people.com and see all the stories and photos than there is no reason to go out and buy the print publication because they have already read the stories and seen the pictures since they were on people.com earlier in the week.

One of the things that sets people.com apart from the print publication is that it is able to post videos. People.com now offers its own entertainment recap show every Monday and also offers the five funniest daytime television clips highlight video. This is more information that is found on the website than is offered in the magazine. I think that people are more likely to use a news outlet that offers more for their time than they are to use a news outlet that doesn’t offer as much. I think the ability to put more content on their website draws more people to read people.com than the print publication because people are getting more for their time and don’t have to pay anything to get it.

The one thing that really sticks out about people.com is that they are able to create a story centered around quotes used by celebrities in other print publications. Currently a feature story on people.com is an article on quotes supermodel Gisele Bundchen made in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Vanity Fair released several quotes Bundchen made in an upcoming article and people.com created a feature story centering around those quotes. While it seems like releasing the quotes is a strategy to get more readers for their print publication, I don’t see how that works. The people.com story framed Bundchen’s quotes very well, and while I’m sure she made more than the quotes used in the people.com story, there were enough quotes released to realize the direction of the story in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair. While I think this method does get some people to buy a magazine, I also think it gives readers enough of the story that they feel they don’t have to read the actual article.

While I think people.com is a great thing because I get all the information I want as soon as it happens for free, I think it really takes away from the magazine circulation, although not to the point yet where the company has decided to go completely online. If the website keeps offering more, fresh information than the magazine we may one day see People Magazine as a completely web based publication.