'Touch' handles celebrity news gently
By Peter Johnson USA TODAY

As People and Us Weekly slug it out in the pop-culture magazine world, a 4-month-old upstart called In Touch Weekly has found a niche and is quickly establishing itself as a must-read for celebrity watchers.

At a time when the United States is poised to go to war, In Touch offers an oasis of peace, where readers can cuddle with stars like J. Lo and Brad and Jennifer.

It all goes down in a slick, easy-to-digest format filled with paparazzi photos and short pieces that stay away -- far away -- from anything remotely scandalous.

Unlike Us, In Touch doesn't bite the stars; it gums them. Unlike People, there's nary an ordinary person in sight.

We're talking fan mag here. This 90-plus-page product, aimed at young women, is a godsend to public relations handlers everywhere. And at $1.99 -- well below the $3.29 its competitors charge -- the price is right.

''It's popcorn for those who love celebrities, gossip and style,'' says Lindy Hess, who runs the publishing course at the Columbia School of Journalism. ''It's not as smart as People, not as edgy as Us.''

Says Northwestern University magazine professor Abe Peck: ''We live in a celebrity world. Fame still sells; it didn't disappear after 9/11, despite the predictions.''

And that's how Bauer Magazine L.P., the German firm that also publishes checkout-stand magazines Women's World and First for Women, is positioning In Touch.

''People love celebrities, but at the same time -- especially young people -- (they) are not crazy enough to read a 22-page cover story about them,'' says Hubert Boehle, Bauer's U.S. chief. ''So the idea was to create a magazine that is faster-paced, very picture-driven, upbeat -- a magazine that instead of focusing on real-life stories really focuses on celebrities. Not just their life and times but also their lifestyle, and we make it accessible to readers.''

In Touch does this through a mix of original reporting and ''write-arounds'' of articles that have appeared elsewhere. Such lifting and reshaping isn't new: In Touch editor Richard Spencer says People pioneered it nearly three decades ago.

An example is a recent package in which five TV interviewers -- Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters and Ricki Lake -- talk about ''the stories that moved them.''

Not a nick of it is original, but In Touch was able to find common ground from stories researchers unearthed about the women. This, in turn, led to a very readable, if not wildly newsy, angle on five very high-profile women.

''I loved that story. I hadn't heard that stuff before,'' Spencer says. ''The people in Ohio are not reading the New York Post or the Daily News or the London dailies. We're saying that we're going to read everything in the world and give it to you in one package.''

All this is accomplished by a staff of 50 or so reporters and editors, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who work in a nondescript office building in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

It is just a few miles away from the glitzier midtown Manhattan offices of Us and People, but a galaxy away from the mind-set of their competitors.

''We're the first magazine to be brave enough to say that people don't read magazines anymore. They look at them,'' Spencer says. ''I'm not saying our articles don't deliver. I think they do. But if you don't want to read them, we'll give you a visual package where you can read the headlines and the captions and the sidebars so that when you go to a party that evening you can say, 'I hear Gwyneth Paltrow is mad at J. Lo' or 'I heard that peanut butter is a great key to weight loss.' ''

Lauren Sabedra, 20, of Dallas says she likes the variety of stories. Compared with Us, ''the pictures are bigger, there's less writing: it's easier to flip through and look at.'' She said she re-read a recent cover story on celebrities having babies in 2003 ''like a thousand times.''

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren is a fan, too, after she and her home in Washington, D.C., were featured in a ''At Home'' picture spread that made her out to be something of a decorator. ''It left my friends in hysterics. Believe me, I'm no Martha Stewart.''

But she's flattered by the attention and says it's fun to read the magazine. (In Touch editors say reps for CNN's Connie Chung have inquired about the magazine doing a similar spread on her.)

In Touch started with a base of 250,000 newsstand copies in November; last week, it increased its base to 350,000. It doesn't offer subscriptions.

That's well below the 505,000 copies that Us sells on newsstands and way below the additional 600,000 Us sells through subscriptions. And it pales in comparison to 29-year-old People, which sells more than 3.7 million copies a week that People says end up being read by 35 million people.

Asked to comment on the new kid, People spokeswoman Susan Ollnick says: ''We're busy making sure our 35 million readers are satisfied every week.''

Whether In Touch has staying power remains to be seen, says Kent Brownridge, senior vice president of Wenner Media, which publishes Us.

He says Bauer is selling the magazine at $1.99 in hopes of getting traction, that its strategy of blanketing Wal-Marts with copies ''is not one that I think will render a real high reader demographic,'' which is why it has few ads. Endlessly featuring stories about ''J. Lo and Ben and Jennifer and Brad gets fatiguing at some point. Sooner or later they're going to have to come up with some new tricks.''

Not necessarily, says Steven LeGrice, a veteran of Star magazine who is In Touch's executive editor.

People into celebrity news ''now get it from ET, Extra and Access Hollywood. These shows are not in the business of Watergate. They're not breaking some great investigative pieces. They're just chattering on, saying, 'Let's play with this, let's do a little more with that.' And we have exactly the same approach. What interests people is what they know about and want to know more about. We take information that's out there and play with it and go somewhere else.''