Don’t you often wonder how celebrity magazines score exclusive sightings and insider starlet news? You might be led to believe their roving reporter corps are snagging tips from sauced publicists who are too drunk to know they’re spilling, or their checkbook does the reporting.

Or, most likely, a publicist is planting an item.

Yesterday, Marissa McMillion, a marketing staffer at designer Christian Audigier/Ed Hardy, blasted the press with news that Britney Spears stopped by the corporate offices to meet with Audigier himself, and that “she came to check out his new spring collection but mainly to discuss business… she wants to work on a line with Chrisitian… was in good spirits… Christian and her were laughing… she also left with tons of gear… She really loved the new Ed Hardy bathing suits… thought they were “gorgeous… put on the Ed Hardy sunglasses instantly… got presents for Jamie Lynn (her birthday is tomorrow)… got her Christian Audigier handbags, scarves, Ed Hardy bathing suit, Ed Hardy cologne and belts.”

And look how well it moved down the gossip line:

There’s People magazine’s “Britney Spears’s Birthday Shopping for Jamie Lynn” item, which reports “Christian and she were laughing as she tried on Ed Hardy sunglasses and checked out the bathing suits”; and there’s Star magazine’s “Britney Gets Presents For Jamie Lynn’s Birthday!” item.

And, of course, because this was a super secret meeting, the paparazzi were nowhere to be found!

Staffers at Parents magazine love their celebrity gossip as much as the rest of this TMZ-revering nation, so they were fawning over People’s $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos this week, too. Except they spotted something awry with the new mom’s six-figure nursery.

Basically, it’s a baby death trap!

The Meredith Corp.-owned magazine was only too pleased to call out Time Inc.’s tabloid’s nursery pictorial, which includes crib “suffocation hazards” called pillows, stuffed animals, and blankets. The “dramatic draped canopies hanging over the cribs” are cause for “strangulation.” And the “cute bows tied onto the crib slats” are “choking hazards as soon as the babies are big enough to get their hands on them.” And there’s an open window sans window guard. CAN YOU BELIEVE?!

We’re hearing People’s J. Lo twins issue moved between two and three million copies at the newsstand, according to multiple scan data sources. (Distributor AMI says 3m; supermarket data say 2m.)

By comparison, Nicole Richie’s baby issue is said to have sold 1.8 million at the newsstand, while Christina Aguilera’s moved an estimated 1.3 million.

Turns out People magazine almost certainly had something to do with the disappearance of Jennifer Lopez’s most active fan site OnlineJLoFan.com. When the tabloid’s $6 million cover photos of Lopez and Marc Anthony’s new baby twins hit People.com, the whole spread also got posted on the fan forum — before the site suddenly disappeared from the Internet.
Now OnlineJLoFan.com is back online, but with one big stipulation.

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Haven’t you heard? Britney Spears is on the road to recovery! Sure, you thought this was the case when she finally divorced then-nutjob Kevin Federline and made her David Letterman appearance, but now she’s doing Responsible Person things like showing up for work and keeping her hair in tact. And her guest spot on How I Met Your Mother? It’s getting rave reviews all around!

OK! applauds the effort: “Her performance was so good, she managed to wow not only the audience, but her co-stars as well.” People says Britney “took a major step in reviving her career.” Us Weekly is pleased to report on “her big TV comeback.”

And it looks like it’s only Star who can’t get on the happy train. Its new issue’s secondary cover story? Britney’s “Secret Meltdown.”

Though even People magazine posted its $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos online before the issue hit stands, it didn’t want anyone else infringing on its publicity boon. Which is why a round of Internet rumors have the magazine responsible for the closure of OnlineJLoFan.com, arguably the largest Lopez fan site. They posted the cover sometime on Thursday and was inexplicably offline shortly thereafter. Now fingers point at Time Inc. attorneys, who may have gotten web host GoDaddy.com to cave; the site now reads, “This site is currently unavailable. If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience.”

And this wouldn’t be the first time the cheap web registrar caved — it canceled the account of Seclists.org when MySpace complained over the publishing of a list of usernames and password.

When this week’s People magazine hit this morning, Americans got their first $6 million peek at Jennifer Lopez’s new twin babies Max and Emme. So cute! So adorable!

And then when readers flip to the inside pages of the magazine, there’s another story about twins. Except this one is about a father who stabbed his twin daughters to death.

Awk-ward.

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Even after spending $6 million for Jennifer Lopez’s new twins, People magazine couldn’t resist also being the magazine that scored those first pics of Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson holding hands. (Smart move keeping Marc Anthony off the cover though!) Us Weekly is said to have dropped out of the bidding for the photos, proving too costly at around $100,000, and was instead forced to go with (yet another) Lauren Conrad cover.

Since none of the celebrity tabloids that hit newsstands today have the $100,000 photos of Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson holding hands, we can only assume People magazine was the highest bidder. We’ll know tomorrow.

People magazine is working to reclaim its youth, says an insider with direct ties to the magazine. Not only is Larry Hackett’s rag moving up the book’s closing time – pulling it back 12 hours, so it will now close Tuesday evening, not Wednesday morning – but they’ve enlisted the help of a crop of veterans to shake things up. Because change always comes from industry stalwarts.

The shift was announced during a Friday staff meeting, and includes the import of helping hands Jane Nicholls, editor of Australia’s Who tabloid (also a Time Inc. title), as well as People en Español chief Peter Castro, who spent 18 years at People proper; Star veteran and short-lived VH1 staffer David Caplan, who joined People in September, is also involved in the revamp. (It’s unclear whether Nichols and Castro are just lending their services temporarily, or plan to stay on permanently. We’re guessing the former.)

Not that all the changes to make the magazine “look younger” are sitting well with staffers: Longtime reporter Ashley Williams is said to have decamped for ESPN The Magazine, while, according to our source, “a lot of the younger people [on staff] are over it.”

• On Friday, the founding editor of People magazine, Richard Durrell, died at his Fairfield home at the age of 82.

• People magazine’s best-selling issue in 2007 – aside from its “Sexiest Man Alive” edition – was Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt cover.

• In Touch’s worst-selling issue of the year was its hard news edition of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Score one for a lady with no actual career! Nicole Richie’s baby photos in People are selling better than Christina Aguilera’s, with the tabloid on target to move 1.8 million copies of Harlow Madden.

Meanwhile, Larry Hackett & Co. paid upwards of $2 million for Xtina’s pics and sold 1.3 million copies, losing money on the issue; Nicole’s are said to have cost half that with a full half million more issues moving.

So what the reverse fiscal smarts?

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Christina Aguilera could give a crap that People magazine, which paid $1.5 million for exclusive rights to her baby photos, actually lost money on the transaction when newsstand sales didn’t spike enough. She wanted more cash, friends, and has little tolerance for the fact that, you know, she and her offspring are not as saleable as other celebrities’ babies, like Anna Nicole or J. Lo. Which is why she’s firing everyone around her.

Gone are her reps at PR giant BWR, her day-to-day manager, and one of her assistants. “She went crazy and had a massive tantrum. It was astonishing. She was absolutely furious and blamed her staff for the way everything had been handled.”

Wait, so is that what postpartum depression looks like?

PUFF OF LOVE You know you’re in a healthy media relationship when you can get People to write up a BS piece on your current liaison. Congratulations Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr. We’re so happy for you. [People]

Just how much did People magazine pay for the first photos of Christina Aguilera’s baby Max? It depends who you ask — but we’ve got a very good hunch.

First, remember that no magazine wanted these photos — or wanted them enough. As Jossip relayed two week ago, Christina was looking for a bigger payday than any magazine was willing to offer. She felt her celebrity entitled her to a larger fee; tabloid editors, knowing how poor Xtina sells on the newsstand, couldn’t rationalize her demands. (Sales of her naked-pregnant Marie Claire cover weren’t so hot. Neither was her wedding in OK!.)

That meant no tabloid published the photos in the week of Max’s birth, which is when something like that is, uh, supposed to happen. (Um, Shiloh?)

OK!’s Sarah Ivens was said to be offering the biggest dowry, but then Aguilera’s camp insisted whoever bought the photos couldn’t run pics of Nicole Richie’s new baby at the same time. OK! was bidding for both when Christina dropped that bombshell and, rather than cave to her demands, we understand OK! left the bidding war.

So who’s pocketbooks were left? Turns out, just People’s; Christina and Max appear on this week’s cover, out today. (Somehow they got Page Six to play nice with the details.)

And just how much cash changed hands?

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Americans walking through the check-out aisle do, in fact, care how much they pay to read exclamation points attached to photos of Britney Spears on the covers of tabloids. Which is why, when Bauer upped by $1 the price of In Touch and Life & Style under pressure from wholesalers (who get a cut of the sale), newsstand sales dropped by a third. But that was two months ago, and customers have, at least in part, been drawn back to the incessant Brangelina coverage.

But with rate hikes planned across the celeb weekly board, how will the others fare?

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WE’RE NOT THAT DESPERATE FOR BABY NEWS, ARE WE? From People.com: “Answering Machine Confirms Julianna Margulies Baby.” That’s right, a real journalist working at People magazine figured out that a 90s actress who most recently had a nice run on The Sopranos gave birth from her mother’s voicemail. People knew she was pregnant. It was just a matter of time before the kid came out. This is a new low.

Heath Ledger couldn’t have timed it worst. Not only did he have a young child and a promising career, but he died on a Tuesday. A Tuesday! Did he even consider the editorial calendars of tabloids when he took all that Ambien? Probably not.

Along with People, Entertainment Weekly’s Tuesday close put them in the unique position to be able to literally cover Ledger’s death. Their next issue (a collector’s item!) will be a “Special Tribute” to his career.

Meanwhile, Slate asks the tough questions, like was Ledger dreaming before he died? Despite all that funding from the Washington Post Co., Slate was not in fact able to get into his subconscious: “Someone who overdoses on sleeping pills probably won’t have a dream before he dies, but it’s not out of the question.”

Man, it’s going to be a long ten days until that new toxicology report comes out.

Out goes Rina Stone, in comes Peter Castro. (Sure, they held/hold different positions, but we’ve gotta make this sound dramatic.) The 18-year tabloid veteran returns to People after 15 months running People En Español, where he had to care more about the Latin Grammys than the regular Grammys. Which, let’s face it, must’ve been tough. There, “his sense of fun, buzz and news were on ample display.” Fun. And also: assistant managing editors Jess Cagle and Betsy Gleick are now exec editors. Sounds like it’s getting heavy on top.

Larry Hackett’s meeeemo, next.

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With the announcement that Rina Stone is replacing John Korpics to become creative director at InStyle, of course, comes a farewell memo from People’s Larry Hacket, who is saying goodbye to his five-year veteran. “We suspect her new assignment will give her a happy excuse to expand her wardrobe.”

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