Janice Min, the editor who turned Us Weekly into one of magazine publishing’s major success stories, will step down next week after seven years there, in what she and her boss, Jann S. Wenner, described Monday as an amicable parting.
Ms. Min said she did not have her next move planned, though she talked about online ventures and television as fields that would appeal to her. But after publicized contract haggling in 2005 and 2007, with speculation each time that one of the field’s biggest stars might just walk away, Ms. Min said that this time she had decided not to renew her contract, which expires Aug. 1.
“As long as I’m here, I can’t really even begin to think about what I’m going to do next,” she said. “But I’m 39 and I’d like to have another career. I felt like I’d done every possible thing at Us Weekly to make it successful.”
Mr. Wenner, chairman and chief executive of Wenner Media, which owns the magazine, said that Michael Steele, now executive editor, would become the acting editor in chief. “We’re not going to make any fundamental changes,” Mr. Wenner said, adding, “I’m going to miss working with Janice; she was a treat.”
In a field marked by operatic personalities and civil wars, Ms. Min has been credited with keeping the drama at Us Weekly to a minimum, running a relatively calm and happy operation, and avoiding the battles with Mr. Wenner that have sunk many others under him. Though Mr. Wenner is known to pinch pennies, industry executives say that with incentive clauses in her contract, Ms. Min has made $2 million a year; both of them declined to comment.
He bought the magazine in the 1980s, and took it from monthly to weekly in early 2000, a move that was seen as risky because it raised operating costs and put him in more direct competition with People and Entertainment Weekly, both from Time Inc. In 2002, he hired Bonnie Fuller as editor in chief, and she hired Ms. Min as her second in command. Ms. Min took the top job when Ms. Fuller left the next year.
They turned what had been a celebrity-friendly magazine with some long articles into a quicker read with a much sharper tone and an appetite for scoops, scandal and candid, often unflattering, paparazzi shots.
Circulation has soared to more than 1.9 million, from more than 800,000 in 2000, second in the category to the mighty People, at more than 3 million. Us Weekly’s advertising sales also rose drastically, outpacing the industry every year in this decade. In the first half of this year, its ad pages declined almost 10 percent, a victory of sorts as the magazine industry fell 28 percent.
Ms. Min has successfully taken unexpected turns, like devoting considerable space to the presidential campaign and focusing on an obscure couple with a little-watched cable show, helping turn Jon and Kate Gosselin into tabloid staples.
Us Weekly came late to building a serious Web site, but its Internet traffic has tripled in the last year. The magazine had more than $300 million in revenue last year.
