Scott Donaton, Entertainment Weekly Publisher: "We're Not A Celebrity Magazine"

Scott Donaton, Entertainment Weekly Publisher: "We're Not A Celebrity Magazine"

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's been six months since Scott Donaton, Ad Age's editor-turned-publisher, jumped ship to become the fifth publisher in five years at Time Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly. It was a talked-about move that brought a lot of questions about what changes he would bring to the consumer title, so we decided to check in with our former boss and see what he's been up to.

Circulation is steady, and EW's rate base recently reached 1.8 million, but its challenges are clear: Ad pages are down 12% through May.

Advertising Age: Selling ads has become a long and grinding road for Entertainment Weekly, where ad pages have fallen the past three years and so far this year, too. Have advertisers lost sight of the magazine?

Scott Donaton: Our brand identity got a little lost in the marketplace with the explosion of the celebrity-tabloid category. Our goal with everything we've been working on in the last six months has been to totally set ourselves apart. Nobody else would claim our mission statement. We're a category of one. We're not a celebrity magazine; we're an entertainment magazine.

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