By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007
Eleven months ago, In Touch magazine ran a "Breaking News" cover about Jennifer Aniston that declared "JEN LOOKS PREGNANT!"
In January, another cover blared: "FRIENDS WORRY BRITNEY'S PREGNANT." In April, Katie Holmes got the treatment: "KATIE LOOKS PREGNANT AGAIN."
In Touch wasn't alone on the bump-watch front. In the space of one year, after Angelina Jolie gave birth to baby Shiloh, Life & Style, owned by the same company, announced four times that Jolie again looked pregnant, was trying to get pregnant, was wearing loose-fitting clothing or nixing foods that pregnant women avoid. In 2005, Star said Jessica Simpson was "Finally PREGNANT!" In 2006, OK! magazine screamed: "J.LO TO BE A MOM!" Yet during this blizzard of cover headlines, these stars had given birth only to bogus stories.
While breathless hype is hardly unknown in the celebrity-rag business, a rival's finger-pointing campaign is rare indeed. Us Weekly recently started razzing the competition with such weekly spreads as "How They Faked the Baby 'News.' "
"When we put it all together and saw how many times they've played this game of trickery, it was pretty shocking," says Us Weekly Editor Janice Min. "Would you continue to buy laundry detergent that didn't work week after week?"
Clearly, this is not simply an exercise in selfless investigative sleuthing. In fact, Jann Wenner, the media mogul who owns Us Weekly, ordered up the attacks. Min, whose factual track record is not unblemished, concedes that her attempt to tarnish the other magazines amounts to "a business decision."
Editors at the other magazines refused to address the details. "Did I miss the memo from Us Weekly saying they want to edit everyone's magazines now? They should concentrate on their own," Richard Spencer, editor of In Touch, says in a statement.
Richard Valvo, a spokesman for Star, says the magazine "would never willfully or knowingly print anything that we deem not to be true." He calls it "amusing" that Min "would single out publications in the same category as Us Weekly" in light of her own record of corrections. (More on that below.)
Life & Style editors declined to comment. A spokesman for OK! did not respond to a request for comment.
At stake in the sniping is market share in a burgeoning business that almost seems to outstrip the available supply of celebrity couplings and uncouplings. At the end of 2006, Us Weekly was selling 1.75 million copies a week, a 40 percent increase over three years earlier. Star's circulation was 1.5 million, a 26 percent jump in three years. But the most dramatic increases were among two magazines launched in the last five years: In Touch (1.3 million), up 151 percent since 2003; and Life & Style (753,000), up 157 percent during that period. People remained the industry leader with sales of 3.7 million.
The formula is fairly simple. Stars must be seen falling in and out of love, cheating or being cheated on, dieting or blimping up, bouncing back or melting down. Weddings, divorces, pregnancies, births, drug problems and rehab stints are huge. The problem is that the two dozen or so first-name luminaries whose faces move magazines -- Paris and Lindsay and Britney and Nicole and their boyfriends and ex-boyfriends -- can stir up only so much intrigue week after week. So some of the magazines take liberties.
"It's clear what the editorial agenda is -- to spin fantasy under the illusion of news," Min says.
But wouldn't phony stories catch up with the publications that peddle them? "There is a market of women out there who just like looking at the photographs," says Min. "I also think a lot of people just haven't caught on."
A review of the Us Weekly allegations shows that the other magazines have repeatedly published stories and speculation that turned out not to be true, but that they often leave themselves some wiggle room with words such as "may" or "looks" or "told friends."
A recent Star "exclusive" on Cruise and Holmes was headlined "DIVORCE!," with the subhead "Katie in tears." So far, no split.
A Life & Style cover this month on Jolie was headlined "WHY SHE LEFT BRAD" (she hasn't). The story said Jolie had told an unnamed friend that "it's over," and the "biggest reason" was Brad Pitt's continuing relationship with ex-wife Aniston. A year ago, Life & Style said Pitt had told Aniston he was going to marry Jolie and that "Angie visited . . . Karl Lagerfeld" for her wedding gown. In Touch also keeps marrying them off. They remain unhitched.
OK! trumpeted the news last month that "J.LO & MARC SPLIT!," reporting that Jennifer Lopez "and her husband of just under three years, Marc Anthony, 38, had called it quits." Well, not so far. And these magazines rarely, if ever, run corrections.
Us Weekly patrols the same celebrity precincts but tends to word things more carefully. A cover this month on Cruise and Holmes was headlined "NO WAY OUT/In love with Tom, but confined by Scientology, a conflicted Katie struggles to find happiness."
Rival executives, blaming the crusade on jealousy over their circulation growth, are happy to point to Us Weekly's mistakes, although not with their names attached. Before Holmes and Cruise had their baby, Us Weekly reported that she was having a boy. Oops: a girl arrived instead.
"We have made reporting mistakes, like any news organization," Min says. "We have corrected them in the magazine. When it does happen, we're mortified."
Us Weekly also reported that Cruise and Holmes had bought an estate near London. You needed a magnifying glass to read the correction.
There are also creative ways of dealing with a scoop that falls flat as a souffle. After a big "VINCE PROPOSES!/Jen Says Yes" cover -- which Min insists was true, including the selection of a ring -- Us Weekly had to confront the apparent lack of an engagement. The solution was a followup story: "VINCE BACKS OUT."
Kerry's Pals?Were some pundits advising John Kerry's presidential campaign while critiquing it for the public?
In his new memoir "No Excuses," veteran Democratic consultant Robert Shrum says Time columnist Joe Klein doubled as a "sometime adviser," and that the Massachusetts senator "craved his approval."
Klein "would chastise Kerry on the phone when he didn't like a speech, counseling both Kerry and me about what the candidate should say and what our strategy should be," down to the kind of health care plan the senator should propose, Shrum writes. There were "several long evenings at Joe's house where he importuned me with his ideas for the Kerry campaign."
Klein says Shrum is getting even for the columnist's criticism of him in an earlier book. "I never, ever give political advice to these people," he says. "I have issue arguments with them. If they ask how the horse race is going, I tell them."
Kerry once asked him if he should fire his first campaign manager, Jim Jordan, and Klein says he responded that he had no idea. He says that he pleads guilty to kicking around universal health care with Kerry but that he has been having such conversations with politicians, such as Hillary Clinton, for years.
Shrum also chides CNN commentator Paul Begala, saying the former Clinton White House aide not only let it be known that he was willing to step in as campaign manager, but wrote a memo to Kerry in which he "helped invent" a plan to concentrate on four issues: jobs, health care, oil and security (J-HOS for short). After the election, says Shrum, Begala criticized the campaign "for doing what he had originally recommended."
Begala, who told CNN viewers at the time that he was informally advising the campaign, says Kerry frequently called him to ask for advice and that he agreed to join the campaign under pressure from, among others, Bill Clinton -- but never got an offer. He says he never liked the emphasis on the four issues but as an outsider was trying to be diplomatic in critiquing the campaign's plan.
"Shrummy came up with this dopey J-HOS thing and my guilt here is that I didn't smack him and say 'that's the stupidest thing I ever heard' . . . If it makes Bob sleep better at night to pretend his failure in that campaign was somehow my responsibility, God bless him."
Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."
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