At right is an easy-to-read graph that shows the year-over-year change in newsstand sales for a half dozen celebrity tabloids. (Where, oh where, is Hip Hop Weekly?!) What you'll notice, in addition to OK!'s nearly 20 percent jump forward, is the decline of Englewood Cliffs-based Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style, which look to the newsstand for an enormous 90 percent of total sales (versus home subscriptions, for instance). It also explains why Bauer is being forced to lower its advertiser rate base, reports WSJ. Having missed its 1 million copy promise more than half of the year, according to ABC data, the new rate base will be 800,000; Life & Style missed its 550,000 rate base two out of every three issues, and will lower its guarantee to 400,000. Supposedly, the lowered forecasts are evidence that even with the doom-and-gloom economy, Americans are not turning to escapist fare like tabloids. More accurately, however, we would surmise circulation numbers across the weeklies are so over inflated, this is just some correction setting. Or maybe it's just a result of shitty (now fired) marketers?

Throw in another hundred thousand copies, and you end up with 2.6 million newsstand copies sold — up from the original 2.5m estimate — of People's cover of Brangelina babies Knox and Vivienne. Originally labeled a "disappointment" by some, the issue is actually the best-selling edition of People in seven years, and its fourth-best newsstand performer in the mag's 35-year history — "behind the Sept. 11 issue (4.1 million single copies), the issue covering Princess Diana’s death (3 million) and the one covering the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. (2.8 million)."

Though the issue sold 1.1m copies more than the 1.5 million People usually does at the newsstand, there's zero chance the tabloid recouped its share of the $14 million photo payment. Helping the situation, though, is the extended amount of time the issue was on newsstands (it was released two days early and will stay on newsstands for an eventual three weeks); the 50-cent jacked up cover price of $4.49; and your stupid willingness to pay to see babies that are not your own.

Newspapers are choking out their final goodbye, while the magazine world, by all accounts, is not fairing much better. Overall, the industry is slimming down after a rough first quarter, and many publications are trying to combat the effects with the largest cover price jump in history. But those numbers are skewed toward bigger competitors who average the most readers yearly, while all but ignoring the smaller trades whose hurt has not been as wide. And not all the mags have been having a hard-go of it: Trash bags People and OK! both saw revenue and units increased, despite an increased sales price. Why? Duh, quality, or inferred quality, of the product:

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Americans are picking up magazines half as often as they once did, sez the latest ABC circulation data. This might be because magazines are a luxury, and in an economy where everyone is tightening budgets, they're expendable. Or maybe because the $3,500 dresses, $85,000 watches and $210,000 sports cars magazines regularly feature are, for readers, no longer aspirational reminders of what's possible, but nightmarish Post-It notes about what will never be.

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A naked Lindsay Lohan and an adulterous Eliot Spitzer helped New York magazine actually increase newsstand sales. [Folio]

"Federal wire fraud charges were filed Tuesday against a former La Crosse newspaper delivery man accused of bilking the New York Times for nearly $325,000 by submitting about 8,500 fake subscriptions. Martin T. Holtet, 50, of 235 S. 19th St., is accused of defrauding the company of $227,000 in delivery fees and $98,000 in printing expenses. Holtet was arrested Tuesday and made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Madison in the afternoon. According to the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Holtet delivered papers for the New York Times from 2002 to April 2008. Holtet was paid for each paper delivered in Wisconsin and Minnesota. From 2007 to early 2008, the number of subscribers in the La Crosse area jumped from 65 daily and 103 Sunday to 2,781 daily and 2,818 for Sunday papers." [La Crosse Tribune via IIN]

The most popular issue of British tabloid Hello! ever published was the September 2007 coverage of Princess Diana's funeral; it moved 1,123,727 copies. The second-most popular issue? The September 2007 coverage of Princess Diana's death. [Guardian]

When Us Weekly slapped Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover, Janice Min saw her newsstand numbers spike: Some 1 million readers picked up the issue, compared to the usual 800,000 copies that it normally moves. Perhaps looking for its own brand of presidential success, People followed suit, putting the entire Obama clan on its cover.

Things did not go as well.

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Just imagine what Miley Cyrus could've done for Vanity Fair's September issue. After all, the racy pics of the 15-year-old shining beacon of the American economy in the June issue have landed Graydon Carter his best-selling issue of the year. A very respectable 435,000 units moved on the newsstand. And she wasn't even on the cover.

With the numbers in hand, we can finally analyze what this issue became: An exercise in publicity.

It's likely Carter and photographer Annie Liebowitz didn't know they were sitting on circulation gold; they just thought they had secured pop culture's biggest rising star for a photo spread in the well. Instead, once the photos hit, they were met with cries of exploitation, which forced the Cyrus camp to claim the girl was taken advantage of, while Carter and Liebowitz stood by their decision.

When it came to media coverage, the story wasn't just relegated to insider media coverage — there was the celebrity factor too, which meant Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood were weighing in, splashing the magazine's cover (of Bobby Kennedy) and the Cyrus pictures in an endless loop of free VF advertising. The magazine racked up countless millions of image exposures — as 915 letters and a 20X traffic spike on the website — and left the confines of anything Conde Nast publicity could control.

And when it comes to the numbers, it was to their benefit.

But not every magazine can capitalize on continuous drum beating about a controversy inside their pages. And that includes a Conde Nast cousin.

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Speaking of Us Weekly, the latest circulation reports for the tabloids are out and they've got Keith Kelly explaining why Jann Wenner might be looking to unload the tabloid: After eight years of steady growth, it's missing its rate base of 1.9 million by 4.1 percent! Not that Wenner might, you know, downgrade the rate base a smidge so he wouldn't have to face headlines like this. Elsewhere for the first five months of the year, People is over its 3.425 million rate base by 9.4 percent, OK! is 1 percent above its 900k mark, Star is 5.8 percent above its 1.25 million base, In Touch missed its 1.2 million promise by 0.9 percent, and Life & Style was off its 550k guarantee by 0.7 percent. Barack Obama, won't you save us?

Remember that Vogue-King Kong controversy that ambushed the media chattering classes back in March? Anna Wintour and Annie Leibovitz were gouged by politically correct knives for repeating a racist and stereotypical image of King Kong and a lady of liberty, making cover star LeBron James look like a screaming ape next to a helpless (though smiling!) Gisele Bundchen. Now that the dust has settled, it's time to look at how Americans at large viewed the issue. In a word, poorly.

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That harshly criticized issue of The Atlantic, featuring Britney Spears on the cover and a paparazzi expose inside, that had the magazine's loyalists aghast at how owner David Bradley could bring his well-respected title to such a low, was a newsstand disaster. It moved just 24,000 copies at the newsstand, or less than half what it moved in previous months. Lesson learned? Leave the celebrity shlock to the tabloids. Thankfully editor Justin Smith denied that the story had anything to do with an attempt to boost circulation, make the magazine profitable, and increase newsstand sales, because that defense is going to come in handy right about now.

Unlike, say, AdWeek, which is no longer published weekly, the glorified college ranking magazine U.S. News & World Report does not carry the term "week" in its title. So when it goes from being a weekly to a biweekly next year, it's going to be a less awkward public relations matter. Perhaps softening the blow, though, is that U.S. News was already cut from 46 to 36 issues last year.

But here's the good news for Mort Zuckerman's growingly irrelevant magazine: When ad revenue declines and cost pressures finally force competitor Newsweek to follow suit, as Michael Wolff predicted will happen within the next five years, well, they're gonna have that whole "week" thing to deal with.

The sniping inside Elle continues, and the fella with the biggest target on his head is creative director Joe Zee.

Fresh off bitter internal reviews of the the magazine's reality show Stylista comes more criticism of Zee, who, with editor Robbie Myers, threw a viewing party for the twosome's Ugly Betty season finale cameos.

"Your story about the hype of the '1 second' cameo for Joe Zee on Ugly Betty was very accurate," says a spy. "No one could believe he would throw a party for such a thing. He is such a lens fly - will do or go anywhere to get on TV."

But it's not just Zee's vanity that's vexing staffers. It's what it's costing the magazine. A source says all of Zee's personal vamping and obsession with being on TV – and, apparently, in the magazine: he's spotted with Rihanna in her issue's table of contents – means "he has taken his eye off the ball at his day job." Translation?

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Populist magazine The Week has sprung up with a circulation of 500,000 — no small feat in a climate where newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek continue to see their numbers slide. Haven't picked The Week up recently? You'll appreciate its "front of the book of the Economist" approach, where the week's biggest news items from around the world get summarized into bite size pieces, leaving you significantly more worldly after flipping through its pages. Perhaps you also forgot who's running the magazine: Felix Dennis, of that little magazine that refused to grow up, Maxim.

So how come this magazine is such a breakout hit, while its brethren are fighting for oxygen? Because Dennis & Co. have thrown journalistic principles in the crapper!

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SURPRISE! NEWSPAPER CIRC IS DROPPING Oh, this is gonna be a fun war: For the six months ending in March, the New York Times' Sunday circulation dropped 9.2 percent, or 150k copies, to 1,476,400. (Daily circ dropped 3.8% to 1,077,256.) Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal, which is clearly intent on killing the Times, saw daily circ grow a smidge, 0.3%, to 2,069,463 copies. [E&P]

AUDIT BUREAU OF PERCOLATION With audit data finally here for 2006 (Was Britney a complete mess then? Cannot remember!), the celebrity weeklies are showing off just how many times they missed their rate bases. Every tabloid missed the mark in double digits, except for People BECAUSE THEY ARE PERFECT. [NYP]

Mort Zuckerman's U.S. News & World Report will slash its rate base from 2 million to 1.5 million, begging the question: Have you ever personally met any of the 1.5 million people supposedly reading U.S. News & World Report? [MP]

Turns out People magazine's Christina Aguilera baby photo issue, which cost them a reported $1.5 million, sold better than the estimated 1.3 million copies originally thought; it moved 1.45 million on the newsstand.

That's one highlighted stat from the latest tabloid data, which shows People up 5 percent year-to-date, with an average 1.5 million copies moving on the newsstand, according to ABC data being released today. The mag's biggest mover? January's Heath Ledger, which sold 1.8m, thanks to it being the only weekly to close late enough to catch the obit. But that issue is expected to be bested by Jennifer Lopez's newborn twins, with estimates of 1.9m.

And how is the competition faring?

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Vanity Fair's July 2007 Africa issue, guest-edited by Bono, was Graydon Carter's best-selling issue last year. Why so successful? Our money's on the twenty different covers Annie Leibovitz shot for the issue, letting customers scoop up at least a few of the covers to display on their Design Within Reach coffee tables. [min]