Amy Du Bois Barnett 1969–

Journalist

In 2003, Amy Du Bois Barnett became editor in chief of Teen People, making her the first African American to lead a major consumer publication of the Time, Inc., print-journalism empire. The company includes its flagship namesake weekly, Time, as well as the publications People, In Style, Entertainment Weekly, and Sports Illustrated. The year before Barnett came on board, Teen People was 46th on the list of the top-selling magazines in the United States, just a few notches below Entertainment Weekly. “I’m very aware of the responsibility that it carries,” she said of her new job in an interview with the Sister 2 Sister Web site’s Karen Halliburton. “I know that I’m [representing] a whole lot of journalists of color out there. And I want to make sure that I’m opening doors for them to come in along with me.”

Barnett was born in 1969 in Chicago, where her mother, Marguerite Ross Barnett, was earning her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago. The elder Barnett would go on to a distinguished career as a professor, author, and then university administrator before her death from cancer in 1992. Barnett’s father, Stephen, had a similarly accomplished career as a business anthropologist and expert on consumer spending patterns. Because of her parents’ various academic posts, Barnett moved several times during her childhood. By the time she finished high school she had lived in eight different places, including India.

Barnett’s college years were spent at Brown University in Rhode Island, where she studied French and political science. When she graduated, she took a job on Wall Street, but soon realized that number crunching was just not a creative enough job for her. She began taking classes in fashion merchandising at Parsons School of Design, and eventually wound up an assistant buyer for the Lord & Taylor department store chain. She also earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University. By the time she was 30, she had worked in three different career fields. “I always put myself in situations that are a little bit beyond what I can comfortably do,” she admitted in the interview with Halliburton for Sister 2 Sister. “I’m always making sure that I challenge myself in every way.”

After working for Essence magazine for a few years, in the summer of 2000 Barnett was hired as editor in

At a Glance…

Born in September, 1969; daughter of Steven (a business anthropologist) and Marguerite Ross (a professor and university president) Barnett. Education: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, bachelor’s degree in French and political science; Columbia University, New York, MFA; also studied fashion merchandising at Parsons School of Design.

Career: Held a financial industry job on Wall Street, New York; Lord & Taylor, New York, assistant buyer; Essence magazine, editor, until 2000; Honey magazine, editor in chief, 2000-03; Teen People, New York, editor, May 2003-.

Addresses: Office — c/o Teen People, Time & Life Bldg., 35th Floor, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020-1393. Home—New York, NY.

chief of Honey. The hip-hop influenced publication aimed at female readers had been launched in 1999 as a quarterly, but new owners Vanguarde Media felt that it had great potential as a more fashion and lifestyle-oriented magazine. They provided funds for putting out ten issues annually, and hired Barnett to lead the charge. During her nearly three-year tenure at Honey, circulation doubled from 200,000 to 400,000. Barnett felt the magazine satisfied its readers’ needs and filled a particular niche in mainstream consumer journalism. “Urban culture drives popular culture, and many companies are recognizing the need to market toward a ‘minority population,’ especially in the current economic climate,” she said in an interview with PR Week in 2001. “But there are still very few places to market to this demographic. Honey really has its ear to the ground.”

Barnett was hired by Time, Inc., to edit Teen People in 2003. Following its launch in 1998, Teen People had captured the number-one spot in newsstand sales in its category, but circulation numbers for this junior version of the immensely successful celebrity-profile magazine had begun to slump. Barnett was brought on board to revive its fortunes. When she was under consideration for the job, senior executives at the company asked her how she would redesign it, and she delivered a confident pitch that included revamping the cover and layout. Executives liked her ideas, and Barnett took over in May of 2003. She became the first African American in Time, Inc., history to edit a mainstream consumer publication.

Two months later, a management shakeup at Teen People —in which several editors who had worked under Barnett’s predecessor were let go—prompted a headline in the New York Post, “Bloodbath at Teen People.” Barnett was also following through on her redesign plan. “It’s not so much a structural change as a complete visual change,” she told Lisa Granatstein of MediaWeek. “We’re trying to make sure the aesthetic reflects what teens are surrounded by—urban culture, MTV, the Web and video games.” The transformation also included the use of more contemporary language in editorial copy. Teen People had been one of the few magazines in its category not to adopt contemporary slang, but as Barnett pointed out to MediaWeek, “’Bling’ is in the dictionary. To not use colloquialisms makes us look staid.”

Barnett was featured in a New York Times style section profile in 2004 for the spectacular Chelsea apartment she had bought a few months earlier. She shares it with partner Jeff Brown, a marketing executive. The minimalist, subdued look of the apartment was enlivened by some Indian statues she had inherited from her mother. “I am very much my mother’s daughter,” she told New York Times journalist Penelope Green. “More and more my life parallels hers. She wouldn’t have expected my life to have turned out the way it did, but I know she would be extremely proud of me.”

Barnett writes the “Letter from the Editor” in every issue of Teen People, and often recounts her own experiences. In her private life, however, she is as subdued as the minimalist palette of her apartment. When asked by Green how she met Brown, Barnett explained that she had known him only peripherally, as a friend of a friend, but he once lived near her job at Honey. “He said he’d tried many times to talk to me on the street, but I always ignored him,” Barnett told the New York Times. “I guess that might be true. I don’t remember because I don’t talk to men on the street.”