An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, he also drew attention to teenage pregnancy and helped popularize the term “baby boomer.”

Landon Y. Jones, who was the top editor of People magazine in the 1990s, when its profits increased fourfold, and whose fascination with popular culture inspired him to write a 1980 book that helped popularize the term “baby boomer,” died on Aug. 17 in Plainsboro, N.J. He was 80.

His son, Landon Jones III, said the cause of his death, in a hospital near Princeton, N.J., where he had lived for more than 50 years, was complications of myelofibrosis.

An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, Mr. Jones was perpetually eager to learn about the next famous person. As a writer for People, he interviewed a young Bill Gates in 1983 and brought along a colleague, one of the few he knew with a personal computer, to help him understand

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