UPPER-CLASS WOMEN READING CELEBRITY NEWS: AUDIENCE RECEPTION STUDY ON CELEBRITY NEWS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF CLASS A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri – Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts By GWENDOLYN HEASLEY Dr. Yong Volz, Thesis Supervisor MAY 2009 The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled UPPER-CLASS WOMEN READING CELEBRITY NEWS: AUDIENCE RECEPTION STUDY ON CELEBRITY NEWS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF CLASS presented by Gwendolyn Heasley, a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. -------------------------------------------------- Professor Mary Kay Blakely -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Wayne Brekhus -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Amanda Hinnant -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Yong Volz ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to enthusiastically thank all the members of the committee for their time, patience, support, and engagement. A particular thanks to Dr. Volz, who was willing to help me steer my ship into a safe harbor. I would also like to thank my family and my friends for being patient with me when I moved to Missouri for two years and then reappeared only to spend most of my time working on the mysterious thesis. And my sincerest gratitude to all the women who were kind enough to let me interview them about their reading habits, which can be a deeply personal arena. Finally, I would like to thank Britney Spears and all the other celebrities who live under heat lamps and magnifying glasses for providing me fertile ground for research. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………….…………………ii ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………………………………v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………….1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………........................................7 Audience research in cultural and literary studies Women’s magazines Celebrity news Upper-class women 3. METHODOLGY …………………………………………………………………………….. 38 4. DATA: ACCESSING AND CONSUMING CELEBRITY NEWS ……………..44 The where, when of upper-class women celebrity news readers Buying on the fly Me time: Reading celebrity news as a leisure activity How long has your garden grown? Cultivating a celebrity news reading hobby 5. INTEPRETIVE REPERTOIRES: CLASS AND READING ………………………. 51 The new playgirl: The aesthetic appeal of celebrity news I want glossy candy: Celebrity news as an addictive power It’s about them, not me: Critical distance and celebrity news I’ll show you mine if you show me yours: referential readings Whistle while you work My precious: Celebrity news as material capital Keeping up with the Jolie-Pitts: Celebrity news as a guidebook 6. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION………………………………………………………..70 iii BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………………….75 APPENDIX I. TRANSCRIPTS ……………………………………………………………………………. 80 II. INTERVIEW PARTICIPANT SURVEY …………………………………………….142 III. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS …………………………………………………………… 143 IV. PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS ………………………………………………… 146 iv UPPER-CLASS WOMEN READING CELEBRITY NEWS: AUDIENCE RECEPTION STUDY ON CELEBRITY NEWS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF CLASS Gwendolyn Heasley Dr. Yong Volz, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT This research attempts to understand the reception of celebrity news magazines among upper class women in the U.S. The ultimate goal of this research is to identify cultural repertoires about the consumption and use of celebrity news. These repertoires are compared to ones found in Joke Hermes (1995) study on British tabloid readers. Qualitative research methods provide the framework for this study and in-depth interviews were conducted in order to collect detailed data. Data was collected from the interviews and analyzed for common themes and repertoires. I found most of the subjects read celebrity news with resistance to its dominant message. In fact, most readers negotiated the text and imprinted their own meanings onto it. Celebrity news permeates nearly all media outlets and has seen a recent surge of popularity and press time over the past ten years. Understanding what attracts readers to celebrity news is useful information for media scholars and professionals. A more intimate understanding of how women use celebrity news also helps to illuminate how being a celebrity newsreader affects women’s lives v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION I aimed to explore an important idea: How do upper-class women readers of celebrity news magazine weeklies read celebrity news? More specifically, what interpretive repertoires can be identified in accounts concerning their reading of the text? How does their class membership affect interpretation? Recently, it appears as if celebrity news has infiltrated the media. For the purpose of this research, celebrity news is defined as news that concerns itself with the personal lives (rather than the body of work or talent) of celebrities. Celebrity news makes appearances in all mediums such as TV, newspapers, magazines, blogs and so on. It can also now be found across news outlets; the nightly news show Entertainment Tonight is no longer the only evening news chasing the beat. Reporters and cameras from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, and CNN are right there, too. The current cultural atmosphere is a crucial time to study celebrity news because many fear it is acting like a virus that deteriorates both “good” journalism and our nation’s fabric. As Chicago Tribune’s Tim McNulty lamented to The Guardian how celebrity news encroaches front-page real estate and worried about celebrity news’ growing popularity. “For features, I want reviews and criticism and real substance but also utility.” In other words, he doesn’t want to feature celebrity news. Like McNulty, many other media professionals wondered what (if any) utility celebrity news offers the world and how the media’s consistently increasing celebrity coverage will affect journalism as we know it. 1 This research focused on discovering what if any utility celebrity news has for upper-class women readers. It focused on upper-class women who received their celebrity news from the weeklies medium. A celebrity newsweekly is a weekly publication that’s published 52 times a year and features both short and mid-length articles about the latest make-ups, break-ups and babies occurring in celebrity set. The most prominent and powerful player in the celebrity newsweekly medium is Us Weekly. By far, this magazine has the largest circulation. Other smaller contenders are In Touch, Life & Style, and Ok! This research specifically interviewed women who regularly read Us Weekly. Us Weekly was selected because it has the highest circulation of celebrity magazines of its type such as In Touch, Life & Style, and OK! According to Us Weekly’s media kit, the 2008 rate base of Us weekly is 1,900,000. The rate base and number of subscribers has continued to grow since the magazine became a weekly in 2003. Us Weekly is in an unusual spot in the media industry, which should be noted, studied and even perhaps admired. In a world where many media outlets are struggling to make profit goals, Us Weekly is the anomaly. The magazine both turns profits and wins awards. Us Weekly became a weekly magazine only two months after Y2K passed quietly. The celebrity-driven glossy garnered momentum, perhaps due to a consumer market ready for escape from the post- 9/11 world and Us Weekly has continued to attract a constantly growing readership, which currently approaches nearly two million. Us Weekly reigns as prom queen of the growing celebrity weekly market. 2 US Weekly began to be the media-outlet-that-could after Bonnie Fuller took it over 2002. According to Newman’s (2005) Media Week article, the magazine’s success stems partly from its Fuller’s captain role: The ship Fuller ran wasn’t exactly the Love Boat. Still, by the time she left in an ocean of bad blood in 2003 and Min, her executive editor, took over, Us was prospering. Critics predicted Fuller’s abrupt departure to rival American Media would be Us’ death knell. Not so. ‘By the time Bonnie left,’ says Brownridge (general manager of parent company), ‘We were overjoyed circulation had gone from about 300,000 to 500,000. Now if we had a 500,000 week, we’d all be in tears.’ Under Min’s helm, the magazine has continued to flourish. In 2007, The New York Post named Us editor-in-chief Min the number 18 most powerful woman in New York. “18. Janice Min, 37, editor, Us magazine. With her mag's profits placed as high as $90 million a year and readership up 191 percent in the last five years, Janice is not just like us.” In addition to the Post accolades, Min won Mediaweek’s 2005 editor of the year. And in March of 2008, GLADD named Us Weekly as one of the publications that offer positive depictions of gay people. Upper class women were chosen as the demographic to interview because a) they make up a larger portion of Us Weekly readers, b) it’s an understudied group, and c) it’s a group with large financial and social capital. For the purpose of this research, upper class women were defined as women with household incomes (HHI) over $100,000. According to The Wall Street Journal, a household income of $97,000 or more puts you in the top 20 percent of households. In Us Weekly’s media kit, $100,000 HHI is highest income bracket listed in the media kit’s demographics; it is an income that’s often used in market research to denote ‘wealthy.’ Of course, it was difficult to put an income number 3 to mark class, but it helped to have defined a specific criterion for the demographic. According to Us Weekly’s media kit, 30 percent of its readers fall into this class demographic. As demonstrated with Us Weekly’s success, celebrity newsweeklies play a large role in many people’s lives. People spend both time and money consuming the information inside its glossy pages. This research hoped to find out what upper-class readers of Us Weekly did with all the information on Jessica Simpson, Katie Holmes and the other court members of Hollywood royalty.