PEOPLE WAS IN BUSINESS FOR 18 years before we produced our first offspring: WHO, published in Australia, is now a vibrant, successful 5-year-old. Next came INSTYLE, which, though only 4, is all grown up and has embarked on its own adventures. Not that we're sitting here home alone. This month, PEOPLE gave birth to twins: TEEN PEOPLE and PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL.
Not surprisingly, TEEN PEOPLE, as shaped by managing editor Christina Ferrari, 33, is a lot like its parent—a mix of celebrity and real-people stories—but younger. (The first cover features Party of Five's Jennifer Love Hewitt.) "We wanted to create an entirely new genre," says PEOPLE president Ann S. Moore, "the kind of magazine teens deserve." About one-third of each issue will focus on style, beauty and health, but the monthly will avoid the boy-crazy, hair-mad breathlessness typical of many teen mags—and will picture only real adolescents, not models. "What we're doing here," says PEOPLE publisher Nora McAniff, "is acknowledging that teenagers are multidimensional."
But that's adult-speak; teens are just telling us they like it. As Elizabeth Neal, 14, of Arlington, Wash., e-mailed after buying the first issue, "Though tattered and torn from an argument with my sister, it was awesome."
PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL, which has published five special issues, launched as a monthly on Jan. 15 with a cover featuring Texas Ranger rightfielder Juan González and his fiancée, singer Olga Tañón. Not just a translation of this magazine, PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL provides its own unique mix of Latino and non-Latino celebrity features, inspirational stories and advocacy reporting that has already made it the largest-selling general-interest Spanish-language magazine in the U.S. Importantly, it is the first to look at Latinos as a national audience. "The magazine is appreciated as much by Cuban Americans in Miami or Mexican Americans in the Southwest as it is by Puerto Ricans," says PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL editor Angelo Figueroa, 40. Adds PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL publisher Lisa Quiroz: "It gives our Latino community a voice and a touchstone of Hispanic culture."
We're proud of both magazines and hope you like them as much as we do.
!Viva PEOPLE EN ESPAÑOL!
You go, TEEN PEOPLE!
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