Janet Giovanelli ’92SVC has a job that would be
the envy of any young girl. She has spent time in the company of
such teen idols as Justin Timberlake and Clay Aiken and marks her
days charting what’s hot and what’s not among 10 - 14 year olds —
pretty cool for a 30-something Queens native and mother of
five-year-old triplets.
She is editor-in-chief of J-14 magazine, which burst on the scene
in 1999 and quickly became one of the hottest teen titles on the
stands. Today, it is published 10 times a year, has a circulation
of more than 580,000 and caters to fans who just can’t get enough
information on singer-actresses Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff or
the vital stats of members of the latest, popular boy band.
Giovanelli helped to launch the title for Bauer Publishing where
she was working as news editor of their Soap Opera Update title.
J-14’s colorful, picture-filled magazine filled a void at a time
when such older titles as Tiger Beat and Teen Beat were still
running articles in black and white and not really speaking to
today’s tech-savvy youngster, Giovanelli says. “Some of those
magazines just seemed so old fashioned,” she adds. “With today’s
teen on the Internet so often, it just seemed like there was a
need.”
Heading up her own magazine with a staff of 12 is a dream
come true for Giovanelli who had a love of the written word early
on and would write and construct her own little books as a child.
While a journalism major at St. John’s, she wrote for the student
newspaper St. John’s Today and impressed Frank Brady, chairman of
the Communications, Journalism and Media Studies Department with
her talent and drive. “She was a top student,” says Brady. “She was
always very interested in magazine publishing right from the
beginning.” After a stint as a reporter with the weekly Queens
Tribune newspaper, she joined Soap Opera Update and began her
career ascent. She says she can’t imagine being anything other than
a journalist. “ You get to cover so many things, it’s never
boring,” she says. “I’ve accompanied a soap actress to Harry
Winston where I tried on $8 million worth of jewelry and I visited
the set of Sesame Street on the 25th anniversary of the
show.”
Giovanelli says her publication has taken the aspects of the older
magazines that her younger readership enjoy, such as beauty and
fashion articles, and merged it with the type of entertainment
articles they want to read. Her staff relies heavily on feedback
from her readers who visit www.j14.com and submit their comments.
As fan favorites like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears unveil
much racier images, and some teen magazines draw complaints about
what parents perceive as explicit content, Giovanelli says her
magazine is “pretty innocent” with its interactive quizzes and
celebrity scoops.
After all, she herself is a mother who commutes everyday from her
Long Island home to her New Jersey-based office and juggles her
schedule as wife and working woman. And while her triplets are
still too young to appreciate what mom does for a living, other
relatives are more than thrilled. “I have a niece who every time
she sees the magazine in the store opens it just to see my name,”
Giovanelli says. “And I have taken my nieces on photo shoots to
meet some of the celebrities. They loved that.”