SURVEY SAYS: Bigger, younger and richer: That’s the direction most magazine publishers would like to see their audiences trending. It doesn’t happen often, though. Of 35 men’s, women’s and teen titles measured in Mediamark Research’s newly released spring 2006 survey, only Marie Claire managed to hit the trifecta. The Hearst title’s audience grew 6.1 percent from last year, to 3.5 million, while its median reader age fell by two-tenths of a year, to 31.2, and its median household income rose 2.4 percent, to $68,291. Among Marie Claire’s competitors, Cosmopolitan and Glamour both got bigger, with Cosmo’s audience getting slightly younger (to 31.2) and Glamour’s holding steady (at 33.7), but both titles recorded drops in reader income of about 4.5 percent. (Cosmo’s 17.4 million readers had an average income of $53,687, while Glamour’s 12.8 million-strong audience was a hair richer, at $55,315 per household.)
Among the core fashion books, Vogue was the biggest (at 10.7 million, up 9.9 percent from the 2005 survey), Elle the youngest (at 33.1 years, down 7 percent) and W the wealthiest (at $79,513, down 3.4 percent). (Vogue, Glamour and W are all units of Condé Nast Publications, parent of WWD.)
Within the men’s field, Maxim claimed the largest readership (13.7 million, up 4.5 percent), while Stuff was the youngest (27.7 years, up 2.6 percent) and Men’s Journal was the richest ($74,693).
MRI’s data incorporates responses from two waves of interviews and questionnaires, each comprising 13,000 adults.
— Jeff Bercovici
FACE VALUE: The man behind many of The New Yorker’s arresting portraits gets his first U.S. show at Hasted Hunt this week, with an opening party on Thursday. The Teutonic Martin Schoeller, who also shoots for GQ, Vogue and W, is known for snapping subjects including Jack Nicholson, Angelina Jolie, Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt and Lance Armstrong at close range, in unforgiving light. “Celebrity is all about surface and saturation, and ‘the big heads’ of Martin Schoeller push those qualities to the limit,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick in the introduction to Schoeller’s new book from teNeues, called — what else? — “Close Up.”
Jolie’s larger-than-life laugh lines and Clinton’s giant crow’s feet will be on display at Hasted Hunt until Sept. 4.
— Sara James
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