People Magazine

I recently picked up People magazine at the drug store. I have got to tell you, this magazine has done a complete 180 since I last read it, which would be about 5 years ago. People used to have great in- depth articles about celebrities and high profile people, along with important events and happenings. Now, it's full of little snippets of this and that and an obnoxious amount of advertisements filling its pages.

It reminds me a lot of a tabloid, or actually, US Weekly, which caters to entertainment groupies whose interests range from who wore the skimpiest dress to the Emmys, to who's pregnant now and by whom. If it were not for the cover article on Dana Carvey's double heart operation trauma, the magazine lacked depth and quality, and would have been a waste of money and time.

I am really disappointed, as I remember People being classier than this. Now if it's just this one issue that's bad, I apologize, but based on the shallowness of this issue, I won't be looking to purchase People again any time soon. There are several magazines on the market if I want Hollywood/ showbiz gossip. I didn't expect People to stoop to this level. And the advertisements-- they're everywhere-- even on the same pages as the articles, and situated between pictures. It's ridiculous how many there are. They are downright distracting to the reader's eye.

I may be wrong, but I remember People having more quality written articles and less tidbit articles. It seems like they are trying to attract more readers with quantity, and less quality. It just doesn't work for me. Maybe I could tolerate the variety of articles if there weren't so many distracting advertisements. In all, this magazine got me dizzy and gave me a headache.

Instead of a nice, relaxing read with my feet up on the couch, I became totally annoyed to find an old favorite turned into a tabloid. A perfect
example of this is the Scoops section. These 5 pages consisted of 1 large picture, 6 small pictures, 8 small snippet articles and 1 full page of advertisement. You got it-- only 4 pages to work with. Immediately following that section came 2 full page ads for Royal Caribeean Cruiselines and MySimon.com, an online shopping site.

To put it bluntly, advertisements dominated this magazine. As near as I can figure, with today's People you can count on the cover story being pretty researched and interesting...but that's about it. The rest of this magazine is a mix of mish- mosh that can be found in the likes of any entertainment magazine or drug store tabloid.

I am very disappointed.