People’s controversial Trump cover a hit on the newsstands

November 15, 2016 | 11:41pm



People Editorial Director Jess Cagle may have caused some celebrities to boycott the Time Inc. weekly — while angering his own editorial staff — when he put Donald Trump on the cover with photos of his loving family spread across nine pages inside.

The post-election issue hit newsstands late last week.

But as with the Trump presidential victory, the issue with cover boy Trump is yuuuge in the heartland.

Staffers were upset because in the Oct. 13 issue, People had a first-person account from Natasha Stoynoff, a former staff writer, accusing Trump of sexually attacking her in 2005.

Stoynoff didn’t report it at the time.

The latest cover has 22 pictures inside and the cover line, “His life, his family and his astonishing journey to the White House.”

Only two weeks earlier, in the wake of Stoynoff’s story, Donald’s wife, Melania, had threatened People with a lawsuit.

In an email last week, Cagle said he still defends Stoynoff’s story and he understood how some people were upset by the most recent cover — and how others were thrilled by it.

But as in the election, the numbers tell a big story. Single-copy sales over the weekend were estimated at 635,000 — up 20 percent from the same issue a year ago, according to one reliable newsstand source.

The same source said that when contrasted with the current tough environment, the issue looked even better, up about 50 percent from the six-week average sales figure.

http://nypost.com/2016/11/15/peoples...he-newsstands/