celebrity gossip, academic style

When I was in the supermarket yesterday, I was struck by the two covers of the major fan magazines. US Weekly featured two ‘stars’ of Teen Mom - the third time the magazine has put the reality stars on its cover this summer/fall, while People reports the “TEEN SUICIDE TRAGEDIES: DEADLY BULLYING.”

Before I delve into the historical and industrial motivations for these covers, I do want to acknowledge that Teen Mom is a rich, if troubled text: as Mary Beltrán points out, it should be called “White Teen Mom” and regularly ignores the socio-economic factors that lead to these young women’s status as ‘Teen Moms,’ but it does not shy from portraying the isolation, despair, and decidedly unglamorous life that most often accompanies teen pregnancy. But there’s also something truly touching about the show that separates it from other reality programming - for Amanda Klein, the mixture of sadness, regret, poor parenting, and inter-personal drama render it irresistible.

When US Weekly made the teen moms into cover girls, it was straightforward to critique the magazine for glamorizing these moms and their choices. The implicit message: impressionable young girls would follow their example in hopes of achieving the cover of a glossy weekly. Of course, most girls are smart and wouldn’t, oh, have a child in order to become famous. But I do see how many girls, especially those who feel mired in poverty, might see pregnancy as an avenue as commonsense as any if it allows them to escape their circumstances.

What’s more, by discussing the suicides of bullied teens, I don’t mean to trivialize the issue. Part of the reason these covers sell is because people are genuinely moved, worried, or feel anxiety about the issues they represent — but that doesn’t mean that these aren’t real people, with real families, and their stories are real, not fabricated tragedies. Whenever I discuss a celebrity — whether loving or hating them, disparaging them or admiring their skill — I’m not talking about the actual person, but the mediated IMAGE of that person. It’s easy to forget with stars, as their very vocation is to be available for that sort of commentary. With “real people” without star or celebrity personas, as the victims of bullying are, this distinction becomes muddled, and reminds of the pain and difficulty that must accompany unintentional celebrity. Just to be clear.

But why would “gossip magazines” be running stories about bullying and teen pregnancy?

First off, Historical Precedence.

Time Inc. began developing what would become People Magazine in 1973, ostensibly as a replacement for Life, which had been shuttered for unprofitability at the end of 1972. Time Inc. didn’t want a gossip magazine — Photoplay, Modern Screen, and Motion Picture were all in the twilights of their runs; due to shifts in coverage and unabashed tactics of scandal-mongering, the label of “fan magazine” was everything that People wanted to define itself against. This new magazine would feature a Hollywood star or two, but its more explicit focus would be PEOPLE — everyday people, political people, people whose will triumphed in the face of adversity, people who were cute, people who played sports well, people who had interesting stories.

The strategy was a brilliant, economically — it expanded the pre-existing content pool, limited to Hollywood stars, Jackie-O, and select music and television personalities TO THE ENTIRE WORLD. If you were a person, you could be featured in People. Scratch that: if you were a cute dog, you could be featured in People. All you needed was a skilled Time Inc. writer to render your story into the stuff of melodrama.

People was incredibly, breathtakingly successful. Part of this had to do with the fact that it could have a “comprehensive launch” due to its placement within the Time Inc. publishing empire. But it also offered a type of coverage — “personality journalism” — that was enormously palatable, went down easy, and was attractive to a nation with “serious issue fatigue” following Vietnam and Watergate. This wasn’t the news, it wasn’t gossip, it was just stories about people! The backlash was immediate: Jimmy Carter decried it, cultural critics framed it as the downfall of engaged journalism. It could be read in one sitting; its stories were the perfect length to read during a commercial break. It could avoid the label of gossip or scandal magazine — which is why it’s collected by public libraries. It was the first mass audience magazine to succeed in nearly half a century.

Of course, People immediately spawned imitators, including US, first published by the New York Times company. Rupert Murdoch attempted to combine the success of People with the format of the equally succesful National Enquirer in the form of a glossy Sun. Even Entertainment Tonight was sold as “People in television form.” Yet none of the knockoffs would be able to compete with People — US passed to various owners and various iterations, and languished as a monthly, neither a true gossip nor industrial magazine in the vein of Entertainment Weekly. In 2000, the magazine became a glossy weekly with a new name: US Weekly.

In 2003, Janice Min took the post of editor-in-chief, and US Weekly began its attack on People in earnest. In some ways, US is to People as the old school Red Sox are to the Yankees: US lacks, or at least lacked, the cash base to pay for photo and story exclusives available to People, with its deep conglomerate pockets, extensive subscription base, and “storied” history with advertisers. Under Min, US was scrappy — they’d attack People, use clever covers and photo-montages to go head-to-head with People exclusives, and generally play the role of feisty, unflappable dog yapping at People‘s heels. And while US still trails People in overall circulation, its readership numbers of increased exponentially since the early 2000s, especially in the much-coveted teen/under-30 market, with an overall circulation of 1.95 million in 2010. (People is still the uncontested leader in the gossip/personality journalism race, with 3.65 million in circulation in 2010).

This roundabout history trip is meant to show that the magazines were founded on the editorial philosophy that people, not just stars, could generate good gossip. Of course, all stars are people - and the really juicy gossip is never related to things they do that seem super-human (buying jewels, jet-setting, looking beautiful — it’s all good copy, but it’s not bestselling material). Rather, when celebrities’ humanness — their fraility, their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, their compassion, their base desires — shine through, that’s when they’re most interesting.

But again, this is a question of economics. Real people are cheap, if not free, to cover.

It’s nice to think that People covers the story of bullying because they truly view it as a problem plaguing America’s youth. And, given the fact that they clearly had an exclusive interview with Mel Gibson’s ex-wife Oksana Grigoreva, as featured on the top of the cover, it would appear that they were choosing to cover a social issue over a salacious one (although, it should be pointed out, Gibson’s abuse of Grigoreva, and domestic abuse in general, is no less grave or systemic a social ill than bullying). But magazines sell on covers — this is a simple, well-known fact. Magazines make their money through newsstand sales, and people pick magazines on the newsstand based on covers. For this particular week, the ardent human interest story promised more drama, not to mention cultural resonance, than an exclusive interview with a woman whose claims went public months ago.

But there’s also the matter of payment. People undoubtedly paid Grigoreva — that’s why they were able to call it an “exclusive.” But there’s no exclusive rights to covering a public tragedy. Anyone can put the yearbook photos of these teens on their covers. This cover was not only more culturally resonant, but its profit margin was wider. (In general, you can spot a slow gossip week by the presence of a public interest story on People‘s cover.)

The “stars” of Teen Mom would be paid, but again, this number would be (relatively) small — I’m guessing between $5,000 - $10,000, if that, for exclusive photos and interviews per cover. (If anyone has information on the specifics, please let me know). Again, compared to what they would be required to pay a star, or even a reality star like the Kardashians, this is a GREAT DEAL.

And it’s an even greater deal if they can hook readers on the story of these girls. Us has proven particularly adept at “changing the conversation,” as Don Draper would say, when they can’t play on the big boy playground. So they can’t get an interview with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, or pay for baby photos of another A-List celebrity? Just come up with an alternative narrative, much cheaper, that they can control. They’ve done this with Teen Mom; they did it with Jon and Kate Gosselin; they did it three years ago with Heidi and Spencer. If you say it’s a story, and worthy of a reader’s attention, it becomes one. And if you’re good at using the cover, photos, and captions to create ongoing drama, you can milk it for several, even a DOZEN, issues. Take, for example, the cover detailing Catelynn’s Maci’s “second chance at love.”

A few things to note: first of all, Maci is obviously the most photogenic of the bunch. None of these girls are drop-dead gorgeous - they are, after all, NORMAL PEOPLE — but she is skinny, has clear skin, and is white. You’ve got those things, and you can be a celebrity, no prob. Her “real life” narrative, including the back-and-forth with the father of her child/ex-fiance and new love, is, in the hands of a skilled gossip writer and/or reality television editor, a good melodrama. Her story is just as “tearful” and “tortured” and filled with “hostile exes” as any other celebrity or star — and leads readers to come back for more in future issues.

(As a side note, I’d kill to know the specifics of the contracts these girls and other reality stars sign when they agree to appear on the cover. Does Us stipulate exclusive access? Is it like signing on for a movie with potential sequels, where if the first one hits, you’re obligated to appear in two more? With the three aforementioned examples, Us has proven so adept at changing the conversation that People was forced to play catch-up, printing their own, belated overage of the dramas. The People teen mom cover featured a mom who had not theretofore appeared on Us, so this exclusivity contracts seem likely.)

So that’s why the Teen Moms and the bullying victims are on the cover of your gossip magazines. Whether or not it’s a culturally productive practice — that’s another question altogether. But it’s a brilliant financial strategy, and one that has fueled the success of “personality journalism” in its myriad forms for decades.

Brilliance, as we well know, is not always ethical, nor is it necessarily responsible. But no one ever accused the gossip magazines of being morally sancrosanct. The argument that they’re simply reflecting our morally jaundiced society is a weak one — as I emphasize above, they’re very good at determining what readers will care about, and then feeding demand for more information about that subject. But when a story hits, as this Teen Mom story so obviously has, or even Jon and Kate did before it, it’s not simply because the editors behind the scenes have done a good job of crafting a story. It touches on something — some anxiety, some worry — and amplifies it, embodies it, allows reader to think about these girls’ specific problems instead of systemic problems that lead to teen pregnancy and, in many cases, lives of poverty. The backlash against the covers wasn’t really about whether or not these girls’ lives were being glamorized, but about how gossip and celebrity culture — and consumption of fan magazines — seems to turn every issue, no matter how banal or tragic, into fodder for glamour. The backlash wasn’t against Us, per se, but against larger issues long-percolating around reality television and its celebrification of “real” people — and the unspoken reality that a reality show and celebrity cover might be the only way for the babies of these teen moms to have, say, a college fund, or for their mothers to not have to work several jobs while taking care of the child and trying to go to school. The real issue is class — it’s just not easy to say.

Ultimately, the problem is that personality journalism makes problems digestible - so minced up, re-dressed, and re-situated that they no longer bare any resemblance to the original issue. Indeed, as People‘s first editorial proclaimed, the magazine wasn’t about ISSUES, but PEOPLE. And this neglect of issues — and our national hesitance to deal with them head-on — is the real problem cultural illness. Teen Moms on the cover of US Weekly is just one of many symptoms.