Maybe this is just a Rohrschach test for whether you're a gay leftist gossip site, but we think the holiday-card treatment on the Ellen Degeneres cover of O makes the word "Joy" look like "Gay." (Or "Goy" if you're Jewish.)

Ugh. What a terrible cover. "JACKIE: HER LONELIEST BATTLE," really? Was she furious that Audrina sided with Heidi? Did Brad stop calling her? Oh, but wait! Levi Johnston wrote a piece for the issue? Double really?

Happy 25th anniversary of coked-out young dudes writing novels about being coked-out young dudes! To celebrate, Random House is finally updating the cover of Bright Lights, Big City.

OK! magazine wanted to drum up sales with this cover about Jessica Simpson's weight loss. When Us Weekly ran the same basic cover, it was their best-selling cover of 2007 — the same year, incidentally, OK! found Jessica's "new" body.

Another iconic cover: Time's special edition issue to commiserate the death of Michael Jackson arrives Monday. They lined up an absurd amount of tributes; the last time Time published a "special" edition between issues was right after 9/11. [Chartini]

What could Time magazine possibly have to say about Twitter that hasn't been said in a thousand prior magazine and newspaper articles, and on Oprah? That it drives the American economy. In fact, Twitter is the new GM!

OK! Magazine has had some issues with Photoshop on their cover before. This week, they show how amputating a leg may be the easiest and fastest way to lose 90 pounds. Diet secrets revealed, indeed.

The magazine industry had sincere, desperate hopes that Michelle Obama could be the next Princess Di, moving copies automatically with her smile. Not gonna happen. But following these simple Michelle Magazine Cover Rules can help:

Joanne Lipman, the diva editor of Portfolio, is becoming known for her disastrous cover decisions. The worst, perhaps, involved the president and Annie Leibovitz.

How to tenderize Bob Dylan's "bleak... sneering" new album, built around the song "Life is Hard?" With the title "Together Through Life" and a black-and-white, backseat gay kiss on the cover. (Click to enlarge.)

What is wrong with Joanne Lipman? Does the Portfolio editor detest business journalism? Is she trying to finally get fired? There must be some reason she's putting Sarah Palin on next month's cover.

Who says the magazine industry is in trouble, besides all informed analysts? Plain old pessimists, they are! For example, did you know that according to prominently quoted guy "Mr. Magazine," new magazine launches are actually up this year? We looked back at the dozens of hot new titles that launched just last month, and we've selected the twelve most promising. Hobbies for the poor, escapism through porn and pets, and information about your various afflictions are especially popular! Gaze upon the future of media:

Let's play the game "Who said it, and about what?": "It was a silly gimmicky thing." "Ridiculous." "I was embarrassed by it. I think most people at Hearst were embarrassed by it." "I was embarrassed that the Esquire name was on it." "That wasn't great, that was just ridiculous." "This Mickey Mouse light clicking on an off. It's not an idea." "When will they learn, oh lord? How long will it take for them to learn?"

It's always fun to get slammed by a disaster and then to look back and discover that some people had been warning you about it forever. Well, The Economist has been publishing scary covers warning of DOOM for years, and they are compiled in a nifty slide show here. We've put together a tasty little sampler after the jump.

Barack Obama is on the cover of Rolling Stone again! So soon after the last one. And just one week after he showed up on the front of publisher Jann Wenner's UsWeekly! In fact, if you have a magazine, you have probably put Barack Obama on the cover. It's summer, so nothing is really going on besides Batman and this Barack Obama character. Does anyone without a pair of breasts sell so many magazines? Did our prettiest president even get this much ink until he tragically died? Attached, a composite of the media maelstrom. (The Tiger Beat one, sadly, is from The Onion. It was our favorite too.)

Sports Illustrated has put a huge gallery of its archived content online for free. The best part is the selection of old covers, from back in the grainy days of short shorts and wild hair. Some of the production meetings back then probably involved drugs. We've selected the five weirdest covers from 1978, a year we picked because SI put Clint Hurdle on the cover that year, and you have to admit that man has a fine name. Look at the covers below!

People boasts 4m visitors to the Time Inc. magazine's web site on the day photos of Jennifer Lopez' newborn twins went up. So, is that supposed to be impressive? Well, it is more than New York magazine drew for its cunningly classy recreation of Marilyn Monroe's last photo shoot, with the troubled actress played by a modern-day trainwreck, Lindsay Lohan. Adam Moss' stunt drew 1.3m US visitors per day at the peak of public interest, according to Quantcast. However, People simply directed web visitors to the print magazine, while New York milked the interest for all it was worth, generating nearly 20 pageviews per visitor. And, while People paid a record $6m to Jennifer Lopez for rights to the actress' babies, New York gave Lohan only a boost to her faltering credibility, which cost nothing, except Moss' reputation for high-mindedness. On the web, at least, People got the poorer deal; and that makes their chest-thumping all the more silly. (Data on New York magazine's traffic comes from Quantcast.)

Time Magazine is so with it. Their cover story this week is about Hillary Clinton. She's really important these days. They also know that in this post self-esteem era, nothing is more appealing that being self-hating. So for a special online feature (the internet is huge!) Time rounds up its all time worst covers. Of course, their choice of covers is a little safe. Those Asian whiz kids didn't make the list, and, for our money, they were totally robbed. Please send in any offensive Time covers that go beyond the "ha-ha, were so silly back then" ones they gave. In the meantime, our round up of their round up, with open captions.

Oh Demi Moore, with your naughty magazine cover splashes. What does the gestating kid (that would be Scout LaRue) pictured at left in your iconic 1991 Vanity Fair portrait think about the magazine's February cover of you? How about your racy appearance on the cover of the subtly-titled V? And she thought her exit from the womb sixteen years ago would be the last time she had to take an up-close-and-personal look at her mom's vadge.

The American Society of Magazine Editors revealed the finalists of their second annual Best Cover Contest today. We find out the winners next week! Oh boy! 9/11 covers from The New Yorker and New York, the day Time decided to just run a huge picture of an elephant's ass (it's a metaphor!), and a cover from Skiing with the headline "secret powder" that is apparently actually about skiing and not coke are just some of the highlights of this year gone by. Overall, as this sampling of the nominees suggests, you had a winner on your hands if you featured the inescapable Stephen Colbert, a lady on a roof somewhere, or a disembodied sphere of lady-part on the right half. Also we're glad to see that New York's coverline question "What If 9/11 Never Happened?" just still refuses to resonate.

2007 Best Cover Contest [ASME]