Entertainment Weekly: Difference between revisions
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===Feature articles=== |
===Feature articles=== |
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There are typically four to six major articles within the middle pages of the magazine. These articles are most commonly [[interviews]], but there are also [[narrative articles]] as well as lists. Feature articles tend to focus mostly on movies and television and less on books and stage. In the magazine's history, there have only been a few cover stories ([[John Grisham]], [[Stephen King]]) devoted to authors. There has never been an EW cover solely devoted to theater. |
There are typically four to six major articles within the middle pages of the magazine. These articles are most commonly [[interviews]], but there are also [[narrative articles]] as well as lists. Feature articles tend to focus mostly on movies and television and less on books and stage. In the magazine's history, there have only been a few cover stories ([[John Grisham]], [[Stephen King]]) devoted to authors. There has never been an EW cover solely devoted to theater. |
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[[kanye west]] |
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===The Must List=== |
===The Must List=== |
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This is a one-page section highlighting ten things (books, movies, songs, etc.) that the staff loves from the week. |
This is a one-page section highlighting ten things (books, movies, songs, etc.) that the staff loves from the week. |
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Revision as of 01:37, 5 December 2007
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| Editor | Rick Tetzeli |
|---|---|
| Categories | Entertainment |
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Publisher | Time Inc. |
| First issue | 1990 |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | ew.com |
| ISSN | 1049-0434 |
Entertainment Weekly (sometimes abbreviated EW) is a magazine published by Time Inc. in the United States which covers movies, television, music, Broadway stage productions, books, and popular culture. Unlike celebrity-focused publications US Weekly, People, and In Touch Weekly, EW's primary concentration is on entertainment media and critical reviews. Unlike Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which are aimed at industry insiders, EW targets a more general audience, particularly young people and women.[citation needed] Its original TV advertising soliciting pre-publication subscribers portrayed it as a consumer guide to popular culture ("the post-modern Farmer's Almanac"). The magazine features celebrities on the cover and addresses topics such as TV ratings, movie grosses, production costs, concert ticket sales, ad budgets, and in-depth articles about scheduling, producers, showrunners, etc. While the television program Entertainment Tonight established that there was public interest in behind-the-scenes coverage of the entertainment industry, it took Time, Inc. (then called Time Life) to prove that Americans were interested enough to read about such issues in a weekly publication.[citation needed] The magazine publishes several "double issues" each year (usually in January, May, June and/or August) which are available on newsstands for two weeks; because the magazine numbers its issues sequentially, it counts each double issue as "two" issues so that it can fulfill its marketing claim of 52 issues per year for subscribers.
The first edition of Entertainment Weekly was published in 1990 and featured singer k.d. lang on the first cover. The title word "entertainment" was not capitalized on the cover until mid-1992 and has remained so since. By 2003, the magazine's weekly circulation averaged 1,700,000 copies per week (Source: Magazine Publishers of America). In March 2006, managing editor Rick Tetzeli oversaw an overhaul of EW's graphics and layout to reflect a more modern look.[citation needed] The website (EW.com), under managing editor Jay Woodruff, provides users with daily content, original video programming, entertainment exclusives, and serves as an archive for past magazine interviews, columns, and photos.
Typical content
Entertainment Weekly follows a typical magazine format by featuring a letters to the editor and table of contents in the first few pages, while also featuring advertisements. While many ads are unrelated to the entertainment industry, the majority of ads are typically related to up-and-coming television, film, or music events.
News and Notes
This is a section of smaller articles about dealing with recent events. The whole section typically runs 8 to 10 pages long, and features several specific recurring sections:
- The Hit List, written each week by critic Scott Brown, highlights ten major events, with short comedic commentaries by Brown. Typically, there will be some continuity to the commentaries. This column was originally written by Jim Mullen and featured 20 events each week, and an abbreviated version was later written by Dalton Ross.
- The Deal Report, written by Michelle Kung, highlights business deal and signings that have recently taken place. The section is separated by medium, but within each section separate events are separated only by ellipses. There are also typically a number of headshots of persons under discussion, as well as one full body shot.
- The Fever Chart is a small infographic showing six events, ranked on their impact by temperature. This feature is rarely seen as of late.
- The Style Sheet is a full page devoted to celebrity style.
- The Shaw Report is a small sidebar feature, written by Jessica Shaw, that rates several trios of related trends: one that is "in," one that is "five minutes ago" (i.e., recently fashionable but no longer so), and one that is "out." This feature is unique for EW in that it is not directly related to the entertainment industry.
- The Monitor is a single page devoted to major events in celebrity lives. It is very tabloid-like in nature, highlighting events like weddings, illnesses, arrestes, court appearances, and deaths. Deaths of major celebrity are typically detailed in a full page obituary titled Legacy. This feature is nearly identical to sister publication People Magazine's "Passages" feature.
Feature articles
There are typically four to six major articles within the middle pages of the magazine. These articles are most commonly interviews, but there are also narrative articles as well as lists. Feature articles tend to focus mostly on movies and television and less on books and stage. In the magazine's history, there have only been a few cover stories (John Grisham, Stephen King) devoted to authors. There has never been an EW cover solely devoted to theater.
The Must List
This is a one-page section highlighting ten things (books, movies, songs, etc.) that the staff loves from the week.
Reviews
There are seven sections of reviews in the back pages of each issue (together encompass up to one half of the magazine's pages). In addition to reviews, each reviews section has a top sellers list, as well as numerous sidebars with interviews or small features. Unlike a number of European magazines that give their ratings with a number of stars (with normally 4 or 5 stars for the best review), EW grades the reviews academic-style, so that the highest reviews will get a letter grade of "A" and the lowest reviews get an "F," with plus or minus graduations in between assigned to each letter except F.
The sections are:
- Movies, color-coded in red, will typically feature all of the major releases for that weekend, as well as several independent and foreign films that have also been released. Lisa Schwarzbaum and Owen Gleiberman are the two primary movie critics, with occasional reviews by Scott Brown and Gregory Kirschling. This EW section also includes "Critical Mass" - a round up of the grades that have also been given by a number of noted movie reviewers in the American press (such as Ty Burr from the Boston Globe and Todd McCarthy from Variety and Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times). Additionally, this section includes the box-office figures from the previous weekend and an "Ask the Critic" sidebar featuring the critics' answers to readers' questions about film criticism. The only new film that has ever been given an A+ rating by EW is My Left Foot in one of the magazine's first issues.
- DVD & Video, color-coded in blue, rates recently released DVDs on both the quality of the film, and of the DVD extras. Generally, the critics avoid rating the films themselves, unless it is something that was not recently in theaters. A chart is also given that displays the sales of DVDs and the amount of video rentals for the previous week.
- Television, chief critic Gillian Flynn, color-coded in green, reviews made-for-TV movies and new series, as well as some television specials. There is also a section of sound bites featuring quotes from various television shows. The section also includes the Nielsen ratings for the previous week.
- What to Watch, currently written by Alynda Wheat, features brief one or two sentence reviews of several TV shows on each night of the week, as well as one slightly longer review, usually written by someone else, with a letter grade.
- Music, color-coded in orange, reviews major album releases for the week, divided by genre. There is also typically at least one interview or feature, as well as a section called "Download This," highlighting several singles available for download on the Internet. A chart displaying record sales and airplay for the previous week is also included.
- Books, color-coded in gray, features reviews of books released during the week. Sometimes, authors will write guest reviews of other works. There is also typically one interview or spotlight feature in this section per issue. Bestseller lists appear at the end of this section.
- Theater, color-coded in purple, (not in every issue) reviews shows currently playing, divided by the city where they are running.
- Review sections focused on Kids (children's entertainment) and Internet (websites, software, and video gaming), each color-coded in yellow, have been retired.
The back page
The final (non-cover) page of the magazine is devoted to a different feature each week. The features include:
- The Pop of King, Stephen King's column, where he discusses various aspects of pop culture, including movie or book recommendations among other things.
- Stupid Questions with..., a short interview, usually with a comedian or comic actor, featuring witty, irrelevant, or playfully insulting questions.
- The Great American Pop Culture Quiz has been running for the magazine's 15th anniversary. The quiz features trivia questions about pop culture from a specific year. Each time the quiz is published, they highlight another year that the magazine has been in publication. This was also the inspiration for the VH1 television show The World Series of Pop Culture.
Specialty issues
Every year, Entertainment Weekly publishes a number of specialty issues. These issues are often published as double issues (issues given two consecutive weeks as its date). Many times, these features will be so big in length that they replace all other feature articles.
Common specialty issues include:
- Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Preview - Generally, each quarter, the magazine covers upcoming releases in movies, music, television, live shows, and books. Occasionally, the focus will be on upcoming movies only.
- The Photo Issue - Once a year, EW dedicates an issue to featuring (aside from the normal reviews and news content) only photos of celebrities. Unlike tabloid issues, these are photos done with the celebrities' cooperation, and often they use some form of artistic expression. A wide variety of celebrities are used, including Green Day, Reese Witherspoon, Morrissey, the cast of the show Arrested Development and Cameron Diaz. Generally, the photos will contain some descriptive text, sometimes about the person or sometimes a commentary from the photographers.
- Academy Awards issues - The magazine devotes at least four cover stories per year to the Oscars; "The Oscar Race Begins" issue in January predicts the nominees, the "nominees" issue in February profiles the recently-announced Oscar contenders, the "Oscar Odds" issue predicts the winners the week before the awards, and the after-awards issue covers the ceremony the week after it airs. Virtually every EW issue mentions the Oscars in some capacity, often on the cover, and a film or actor's Academy Awards chances are often noted in EW reviews. In comparison, music's Grammy Awards, television's Emmy Awards, and theater's Tony Awards are given relatively limited coverage.
- End-of-the-Year Issue - The last issue of each year. On each cover is the Entertainer of the Year, which is chosen by readers at EW's official website. The issue consists of the 10 best items released in theater, film, TV, music, DVD, literature, and (as of last year) fashion that year. Music, TV, and Movies have two critics give their top 10; the others only have one. Each section also has a five-worst list (Movies is the only section in which both critics give the worst). Also in the issue are special sections devoted to (and logically titled) Entertainers of the Year, Great Performances, Breakout Stars, a timeline of infamous celebrity mishaps, and obituaries of stars who died (this used to be in a separate issue; it was combined with the EOTY issue in 2003). This is the only issue without any reviews.
In 2007, J.K. Rowling was named Entertainment Weekly's Entertainer of the Year for her Harry Potter series.
Previous EW Entertainers of the Year include Bart Simpson (1990), Jodie Foster (1991), Steven Spielberg (1993), Tom Hanks (1994), Rosie O'Donnell (1996), Ellen DeGeneres (1997), Leonardo DiCaprio (1998), Ricky Martin (1999), Russell Crowe (2000), Nicole Kidman (2001), Denzel Washington (2002), Jon Stewart (2004), and the casts of Saturday Night Live (1992), Friends (1995), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Lost (2005) and Grey's Anatomy (2006).
