What's the deal with teen magazine editors referring to their readers as "tribes" all of the sudden? Did we miss that memo?

Ex-Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein, as quoted in last week's BusinessWeek:

What I want to do is gather my tribe" — yes, Rubenstein actually says things like this — "the ones reading Seventeen, and the ones who were, and grew out of it."

Redbook's Stacy Morrison at mediabistro.com's "Editors on Truth Serum" panel Monday:

"I don't edit a brand: I'm the head of a tribe. Magazines, at their base, are about identity. With the Web, the question I ask is: Can we keep getting our fingers into the tribe fast enough?"

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