By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
April 4, 2000
Come April 19, Oprah Winfrey will be on the cover of yet another magazine. But this time, she’ll be gracing one that bears her name.
The periodical, called O: The Oprah Magazine, marks the book club guru’s foray into another side of publishing. The talk show host and actress is the founder and editorial director of O (which also happens to be her nickname).
What will readers get when they plop down $2.95 for a copy? Magazine representatives are close-mouthed. However, there are a few things we know about the premiere issue.
For instance, the table of contents will be on a reader-friendly Page 2, rather than buried somewhere after the initial 20 pages of ads that are customary in women’s magazines.
Also, O won’t publish advertisements for such products as tobacco and diet pills.
“We look at all advertisers on a case-by-case basis, but we are never going to run ads for anything that’s not healthy,” O publisher Alyce Alston says. “Oprah stands for integrity and is a source of inspiration and empowerment for millions of people. So what appears in her magazine is a reflection on her. Therefore, we keep that in mind with everything that we do. That has to be the core of our foundation.”
Regardless of the conditions, Alston says she has had no difficulty selling ad space. The first issue will carry 166 advertising pages, and the second issue closed at 125.
“They’re lined up around the block,” she says.
O will be bimonthly for two issues, then monthly beginning in September.
Creating a magazine that bears her name isn’t a vanity project for Winfrey, who appears to be taking the same hands-on approach that John F. Kennedy Jr. did with George.
Yes, she will be on the cover (at least for the first three issues), but she refuses to be just a celebrity figurehead.
Winfrey told the Associated Press that editor in chief Ellen Kunes “has done a good job of not having her ego get in the way with someone like me, who has such a big mouth. I won’t shut up! That’s on the record.”
Winfrey’s hands-on approach means that if she sees a cover she doesn’t like, she will have it changed. For instance, she nixed a cover line that heralded, “Reach Any Goal in Five Simple Steps,” noting that there are no simple steps to achieving life goals.
“I do know that if I read a piece and if I think the writing is condescending, I do know how to say, `Find another writer, ” Winfrey told the New York Times. “And that has happened a couple of times.”
Adds Kunes, “In general, there will be a mission to translate [Winfrey’s] vision and what she does on the show into magazine form. Some of the people that you regularly see on her show, like author Gary Zukav and financial analyst Suze Orman, will write columns.”
Asked about the presence of celebrities–such as Diana Ross, who appears Wednesday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to hype her summer tour with the Supremes–Kunes said there will be some in the magazine, but not a whole heck of a lot.
“Really everything that’s in the magazine goes to helping women explore who they are and how they can live a better life,” she says. “So any kind of celebrity interviews that we do, we’ll always have that in mind. We won’t feature them for the purpose of helping to promote a new movie.”
