GANGSTA CONTENT.(The Talk of the Town)(quarterly magazine, 'Don Diva')

The summer issue of Don Diva, which bills itself as "The Original Street Bible," has just reached newsstands. Don Diva is a glossy quarterly, with a circulation of about a hundred thousand, in whose pages readers can follow the bloody rise and fall of ruthless crime lords, learn about advances in drug-concealment techniques, look at models in thong bikinis, and find out where to buy fifteen-thousand-dollar alligator jackets, three-thousand-gallon aquariums, and 9-millimetre submachine guns. Each issue has two covers: an "Entertainment" cover, featuring a popular hip-hop artist, such as Ja Rule, 50 Cent, or D12; and a "Street" cover, featuring staged photographs of grim scenarios, among them a young man being shot in the face and a group of boys weighing and bagging crack around a kitchen table. A parental-advisory label warns of "gangsta content."

Don Diva's editor-in-chief is a former telephone-company employee and marketing executive from suburban New Jersey named Tiffany Chiles. Chiles founded the magazine in 1999, at the suggestion of her husband, who was then serving a ten-year federal sentence for bankrolling his music label, Big Boss Records, with profits from his wholesale cocaine business. A similar publication, F.E.D.S., which stands for "Finally Every Dimension of the Streets," had been around for a year or so. And, not long after Don Diva's debut, a cousin of Chiles's husband launched his own title, FELON, which stands for "From Every Level of Neighborhoods." But, judging by regularity of publication, number of ads (music, clothes, jewelry, beepers, vodka, legal services), and sales of ancillary products, Don Diva's mixture of life-style and service journalism has been particularly successful: the magazine recently launched a U.K. edition.

On a recent afternoon, Chiles met with some of her staff at Don Diva's offices, in Bergen County, to discuss the new issue. Among them were Aisha Gumby, who, as head of operations, makes sure that copies of the magazine reach the bodegas, car washes, and hair salons that fall outside the normal distribution channels, and Susan Hampstead, a senior editor, who is also a publisher of novels written by prison inmates. Chiles's husband, no longer in jail, was there, too. He served everyone sodas, while their three-year-old son zipped around on a scooter. Chiles, who wore no makeup and had her hair pulled back, said, "At the end of the day, I'm still a PTA mom--you know what I mean?"

After handing out a tentative page layout, Chiles went through the rundown for the issue. She had nothing yet, she said, for "The Don's Notebook," a roundup of new products for men. The "News U Can Use" section would focus on new X-ray ...