Hotmail
The Star takes on People
Bonnie Fuller says the magazine is no longer a tabloid
 | Bonnie Fuller, chief editorial director and executive vice president of American Media Inc., poses for a portrait next to a copy of the cover of the newest issue of Star magazine. |
Frank Franklin Ii / AP |
NEW YORK - Shocker! Did Star magazine desert longtime companions for lavish affair with rich, sexy young readers?
Truth be told, it’s too soon to tell. But such juicy speculation gets a glossy new push Thursday as uber-editrix Bonnie Fuller completes the 30-year-old gossip sheet’s transformation from supermarket tabloid to mainstream magazine.
You can still find Star at the checkout lane, but not next to smudgy scandal sheets that put politicians’ names in the same sentence as “sexually transmitted disease.” Now with more pages, celebs and sex than ever, Star has moved to the front of the aisle, right next to wholesome People — one of the most popular, profitable magazines in the world.
What a difference a few feet makes.
Revealed! “We are not a tabloid anymore,” Fuller said during an interview in her modest office at the Manhattan headquarters of American Media Inc., which owns the Star, National Enquirer and dozens of other titles both salacious and serious.
No longer a tabloid
Her goal: “To get a new generation reading Star.”
“Star has been around for 30 years, and our readers have become mothers and grandmothers,” she said. “We needed to grow a new generation of younger readers.”
Not to mention wealthier and more educated. These are the people coveted by the major advertisers that AMI owner David Pecker hopes to attract instead of the body-part enlargers and Viagra-for-ladies pushers that traditionally advertise in his tabloids.
To accomplish this, Fuller is using the same formula she made her name with: Create a potent cocktail of sex and fame, liberally spiked with short articles and photos of celebs at their best and worst.
If this works for Star, it will be the most impressive feat yet in a skyrocketing career that has made Fuller the most successful — and notorious — modern editor.
“I hate to use the word greatest. She’s certainly the most commercially successful editor of our time,” said media columnist Simon Dumenco of Folio, which covers the magazine industry. “But a lot of what she does is not journalism — it’s entertainment, first and foremost. Trend pieces, quizzes about sex, pictures of stars.”
“She has distinguished herself, if that’s the word you want to use, by being pretty vulgar,” Dumenco said. “She has an uncanny finger on the pulse of what the culture can take in terms of vulgarity.”
He singled out Star’s recent “then and now” cover on former Cheers star Kirstie Alley, which trumpeted her weight as “275 lbs!”
Jackpot! The issue was a best-seller, moving about 900,000 copies, Fuller said.
Fuller said the story was prompted by Alley being dropped as a Pier 1 spokeswoman. Star editor-in-chief Joe Dolce said the piece was actually a sign of the kinder, gentler Star, which no longer pays for sources and has reporters canvassing everyone from gardeners to bellhops to sniff out the next big story.
“If we were a tabloid, we would have just done, ‘Look at how fat Kirstie Alley is,”’ Dolce said. “Instead, we found friends trying to help her, we talked about this is what led to her problem, this is how she’s trying to solve it. We added a level of depth. We could have just said, ‘She’s a fat pig.”’
Asked for a response, Alley’s agent, Jason Weinberg, spoke so carefully the pauses between his words were longer than some Hollywood careers. “Tabloids for the most part run unauthorized stories that actors, whether the story is true or false, would prefer to not have printed,” was all he would say.
Exclusive! Star is no longer a tabloid!
Can Star take on People?
That claim drew laughter from People managing editor Martha Nelson, whose magazine is squarely in Star’s crosshairs.
“I guess the proof is in the publication,” Nelson said.
It just so happened that People released its 30th anniversary edition on Thursday, featuring Jessica Simpson on a pristine white cover. Star’s cover had Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, united through the wizardry of computer photo editing, and the cover line: “Did Tom Dump Penelope for Nicole?”
People sells about 3.6 million copies each week for Time Inc. In 2003, the magazine sold 3,705 ad pages worth $744 million, more than any other magazine, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Star sold 823 ad pages worth $37 million in 2003. Its circulation at the end of 2003 was 1.2 million, down from 1.38 million in the same period a year before. Rivals say it has fallen even lower on some issues. Factors in this drop include the makeover process — it went glossy first in New York and Los Angeles — and the cover price being raised from $2.19 to $3.29 to offset the expected circulation drop.
Fuller’s track record suggests Star’s numbers will jump like an agent when the phone rings.
A history of success
The 47-year-old Canadian, a married mother of four, got her first high-profile editing job at YM, where she nearly doubled circulation in five years. Then she launched the U.S. edition of Marie Claire, which was a quick success.
Next stop: Cosmopolitan, where she replaced the legendary Helen Gurley Brown and boosted newsstand sales 8 percent. She abruptly left for Glamour, where she replaced another legend, Ruth Whitney, and experienced her only failure. Newsstand sales declined while Fuller chased other jobs, and her contract was not renewed.
When Fuller saw an opening at Jann Wenner’s money-losing US Weekly, she seized the job and shocked the industry, raising circulation an astonishing 55 percent and putting the magazine in the black. She also cemented her reputation as a brutal taskmaster, enforcing horrific hours on her staff in search of the perfect cover line.
After a whirlwind 16 months that took US Weekly from shot to hot, Fuller bolted to AMI as editorial director of all the company’s magazines for an outrageous pay package including a $1.5 million salary, $1.5 million equity stake, circulation incentives up to $900,000 a year, plus perks like car service and health club expenses.
Vicious Attack! Suddenly Fuller was the hunted, not the hunter.
Gossip items from disgruntled employees started turning up. An “isurvivedbonnie” message board was born. The killer was a devastating Vanity Fair profile in which an unnamed (the irony!) “former editorial assistant” claimed that after Fuller ordered a free dinner to be packed up and sent home by company car for her and her husband, the meal was befouled with various body parts and fluids.
“She was just being so, so horrible to so many people and ... look, I swear to God, we’re really nice people. You just don’t know what we went through,” the person told Vanity Fair.
Star Justice! Fuller takes a long pause when the topic of the contaminated dinner is raised.
“In order for Star to write about anybody, we have to make sure that it’s true,” Fuller said. “That’s not always a bar that’s climbed over in terms of things that I’ve had written about me.”
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM MEDIA |
 Esquire goes 3-D in attempt to energize print |
| Add Media headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide