In perhaps the most heated moment of their Fox News interview, the Duggar sisters slammed the magazine In Touch Weekly, which first obtained redacted police reports describing their molestation through a Freedom of Information Act request, and its parent company Bauer Media Group.
"Snooki's Getting Married" is the headline in In Touch Weekly, the tabloid you buy when the supermarket is out of People, Us Weekly, Star, National Enquirer, and even OK!. Except there is absolutely no truth to it.
Heavily leveraged (read: bankrupt) Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Guidice did an interview with In Touch Weekly and they have "unearthed" pictures of her and husband Joe from 1984. How much do you think the tabloid had to pay?
All the tabloids threw something together on deadline after our tape of Eric Dane, Rebecca Gayheart, and Kari Ann Peniche went up. So many questions: Will their marriage survive? Who is the other woman? And just who wore it better?
In Touch Weekly's fifth anniversary party and obligatory afterparty went down last night at Tenjune in the Meatpacking. We hear a bunch of folks didn't even make it in the door. A publicist of our acquaintance says: "A bunch of us—from television, film, lifestyle brands, hotels, personal reps—were in line for 2+ hours and never let in while the bouncer 'Alex' at Tenjune let his friends (AKA emaciated underage girls) in. They turned away a reporter from The New York Times but let in Ben Widdicomb from the New York Daily News.... I mean, Tenjune is over, they are lucky the party was there and it looked like a hot spot for the night. And we all collectively agreed that we will not buy the magazine ever again or give our projects or celebs to them. We'd rather go to Life & Style! Seriously." Well, that'll be easy, since they have the same editor!
What's going on with the Englewood, N.J. celeb weekly? Well! Staffers are leaving for Star, of all places, and In Touch keeps insisting that Brad and Angelina are on the rocks, despite all photographic and other evidence to the contrary. And... they're in New Jersey? Yeah. Today, Keith Kelly reported that two In Touch editors, Casey Brennan and Aaron Rasmussen, have fled to the welcoming arms of Star Mama Candace Trunzo—and now senior reporter Cristina Everett has left as well, to become a senior reporter. So in what known universe is Star considered actually a desirable place to work?
Not only has AdAge crowned Vogue Editor Anna Wintour the Magazine Editor of the Year, they've put together a list/chart of "The A List," their top ten books for 2006. You can download it here. It gives a nice perspective on where the industry is going: More, the magazine of the year, is lauded for its pursuit of women whose best eggs are behind them. Rapidly-rising In Touch Weekly just cracks the top ten, coming in four slots below People. New York magazine is at number four, and AdAge declares it "a title that should be read around the country." It's true: How else will folks in Hamtramck learn to assemble a Malcolm Gladwell Halloween costume?
Yesterday's Life & Style has a great speculative scoop: Could hottie stoner Matthew McConaughey be married? Perhaps to his girlfriend, Penelope Cruz? The mag has a photo of him wearing what seems to be a wedding band on his left ring finger, so it would seem he's done the deed, right? Well, actually, no: As the backwards Nike swoosh on his shorts indicates, the photo is flipped and the ring is on his far less interesting right hand. Which the folks at L&S's Bauer stablemate, In Touch Weekly, were able to figure out.
We mentioned earlier today that Bauer Publishing's Life & Style is insisting upon its TomKat-breakup scoop even while the rest of the celeb-weekly establishment begs insists the mag wrong. Now a charmingly catty contact at a rival pub points out that even Bauer's other celebrity title, In Touch Weekly doesn't buy it:
The new batch of Audit Bureau stats on magazine circ isn't out till next week, but Ad Age's Nat Ives is growing restless. He's tallied up a bunch of early reports and finds a shocking amount of good news (for the industry, if not so much for society):
Women's Wear Daily reports today that newsstand sales for People, Us Weekly, In Touch and Star are all down in the fourth quarter. Oh, the horror! Why, God, why?
• Time's Viveca Novak testifies to Plame grand jury, and — eschewing Judy Miller's wait-a-few-weeks model — she'll write about it in next week's Time. [NYT]
• MPA figures out what'll save magazines: This crazy new thing called the Internet! [Mediaweek]
• Actress won't get naked for VF, and fires publicist who set up the shoot. We're a little bit in love now, to be honest. [Radar]
• Salon.com "wants to be known for more than polemics." Who knew. [MW]
• In Touch runs "Exclusive: Jessica's Breakup Diary." Which is great — except, of course, that Jessica had nothing to do with it. [WWD]
This just in from Advertising Age:
The New York Sun — and hey, they would know — has a sad revelation this morning: the celebrity magazine editor is dying. ("Oooh!" our readers scream, "which one, which one, which one??!!") The Sun focuses on Richard Spencer, the editor-in-chief of In Touch Weekly, a former soap opera writer and a guy who nobody knows, which is what happens when you work in Englewood, New Jersey. (If MediaBistro had a Fishbowl Englewood, they'd have a weekly feature talking to everyone they could see eating Cheez-Its and drinking bad coffee at different tables in the Bauer break room.)
