Miller time - Seventeen editor Caroline Miller - Interview

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1994

When Caroline Miller was tapped for the editorship of 1.9 million-circulation Seventeen by K-III Magazines in February, she knew she had a formidable challenge ahead. The former editor in chief of the now-defunct Lear's, which was aimed at the 40-plus woman, would have to reorient herself to an audience up to three decades younger. With her first issue out this month, Miller tells Word One how she shifted gears and how she is freshening up the 50-year-old teen monthly.

Word One: What is it like editing a magazine for teenagers after editing one for middle-aged women?

Miller:. The short answer is delightful. I'm an editor, not an expert in middle age. I have a 19-year-old daughter and two younger children. If you scratch the surface of any woman, you will find a memory of being that age. What I do as an editor is get a very personal sense of who my readers are.

Word One: How has the editorial mission of Seventeen evolved?

Miller: We have a broad readership. Our readers want to grow up to be models and to be president. It's our mission to hold their hand during a very interesting and difficult period in their life. They are trying to get a sense of who they are that is broader than what they look like.

Word One: What is the difference between Seventeen and its competition?

Miller: Sassy is a narrower publication with a smaller group of young women who identify themselves as hipper and more outside the mainstream. If you look at the cover of YM's current issue, you'll see four out of six headlines about getting a guy. We have a "cute guy" quotient too, but we have a broader mandate. It's also a beauty and fashion magazine, and it's the most sophisticated in this market.

Word One: What are some of the changes in your first issue?

Miller: It will have more energy and a sense of humor. One new four- to six-page monthly feature will be devoted to a different high school every month. We will shoot portraits of real kids. We want to show ethnic diversity as well as diversity in body types. I imagine this feature becoming a signature |of the magazine^.

"But, for girls, self-scrutiny ... was drummed in by magazines like Seventeen, Glamour, 'Teen, and Mademoiselle, with their increasingly skinny models, their advice columns, and those endless moronic quizzes. ... There's no doubt that these magazines ... exaggerated our psychic schizophrenia. ... The magazines themselves were schizophrenic about whether to approach us as if we were coherent, unified individuals or a bundle of contradictory, inchoate multiple personalities."