People's website, People.com, focuses on celebrity and crime news, royal updates, fashion and lifestyle recommendations and human interest stories.

[8] People is perhaps best known for its yearly special issues naming the "World's Most Beautiful", "Best & Worst Dressed", and "Sexiest Man Alive".

The magazine's headquarters are in New York City, and it maintains editorial bureaus in Los Angeles and in London.

[citation needed] Stolley characterized the magazine as "getting back to the people who are causing the news and who are caught up in it, or deserve to be in it.

"[9] Stolley's almost religious determination to keep the magazine people-focused contributed significantly to its rapid early success.

It is said that although Time Inc. pumped an estimated $40 million into the venture, the magazine only broke even 18 months after its debut on February 25, 1974.

The premiere edition[clarification needed] for the week ending March 4, 1974, featured actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the film The Great Gatsby, on the cover.

That issue also featured stories on Gloria Vanderbilt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the wives of U.S. Vietnam veterans who were missing in action.

This group included managing editor Stolley, senior editors Hal Wingo (father of ESPN anchor Trey Wingo), Sam Angeloff (the founding managing editor of Us magazine) and Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. (a former Life writer and also a film and television producer); writers James Watters (a theater reviewer) and Ronald B. Scott (later a biographer of presidential candidate Mitt Romney); former Time senior editor Richard Burgheim (later the founder of Time's ill-fated cable television magazine View); Chief of Photography, a Life photographer, John Loengard, to be succeeded by John Dominus, a noteworthy Life staff photographer; and design artist Bernard Waber, author, and illustrator of the Lyle The Crocodile book series for children.

Many of the noteworthy Life photographers contributed to the magazine as well, including legends Alfred Eisenstaedt and Gjon Mili and rising stars Co Rentmeester, David Burnett and Bill Eppridge.

Other members of the first editorial staff included editors and writers Ross Drake, Ralph Novak, Bina Bernard, James Jerome, Sally Moore, Mary Vespa, Lee Wohlfert, Joyce Wansley, Curt Davis, Clare Crawford-Mason,[10] and Jed Horne, later an editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

[citation needed] On July 26, 2013, Outlook Group announced that it was closing down the Indian edition of People, which began publication in 2008.

The "free, ad-supported online-video network ... covering celebrities, pop culture, lifestyle and human-interest stories", was rebranded as PeopleTV in September 2017.

[14] In December 2016, LaTavia Roberson engaged in a feud with People after alleging they misquoted and misrepresented her interview online.

[19] It was later announced he would be replaced by deputy editor Dan Wakeford, who previously worked for In Touch Weekly.

[citation needed] On October 6, 2021, Dotdash agreed to purchase Meredith, which still owned People and sister magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, and Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Journal,[21] in a $2.7 billion deal.

There were numerous reasons cited for the publication shutdown, including a downfall in ad pages, competition from both other teen-oriented magazines and the internet, and a decrease in circulation numbers.

[7]People reportedly paid $4.1 million for photos of newborn Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

[7] The photos set a single-day traffic record for their website, attracting 26.5 million page views.

[7] The annual feature the "Sexiest Man Alive" is billed as a benchmark of male attractiveness and typically includes only famous people.

Originally awarded in the wintertime, it shifted around the calendar, resulting in gaps as short as seven months and as long as a year and a half, with no selection at all during 1994 (21 years later the magazine did select Keanu Reeves to fill the 1994 gap, with runners-up including Hugh Grant and Jim Carrey).

This series of full-page features and half-page featurettes includes world leaders and political activists, famous actors and entertainers, elite athletes, prominent business people, accomplished scientists and occasionally members of the public whose stories have made an unusual impact in news or tabloid media.

This includes socially relevant news events that made headlines around the world in general but more specifically in the United States.

[57] Previous title of "Private Lives" was dropped completely and the publication was defined as a "yearbook" for the first time.

[69] The list included Prince, David Bowie, Nancy Reagan, Alan Rickman, Doris Roberts, Muhammad Ali etc.

[74] The magazine has inspired the television series People Magazine Investigates, a true crime series which debuted in 2016 on Investigation Discovery,[75] and People Puzzler, a crossword puzzle-themed game show which debuted in 2021 on Game Show Network.

[77] An earlier TV version of the magazine began as an entertainment news program, hosted by Alan Hamel, Pat Mitchell and Phyllis George, with Peter Stone as an occasional substitute and it was produced by Time-Life Television, aired on CBS in the fall of 1978, and lasted for a few months.