After leaving Jann Wenner's side as the publishing maestro's No. 2, Kent Brownridge went over to Maxim, after private equity firm Quadrangle bought it and Blender from Dennis Publishing, renamed its parent Alpha Media, and appointed Brownridge leader of the lad mags. Then, heh, he got sacked last month amidst investor unhappiness. But it's not like Brownridge is just going to comb over and play dead — he's got a new gig. Richard Desmond, he of the British publishing empire Northern Shell, hired Brownridge to lead his American tabloid OK!. So much trust Desmond has in Brownridge, he's having founding and sitting EIC Sarah Ivens and publisher Tom Morrissy begin reporting to him. But it's not just that Brownridge has found another last act that firms up his shock and awe campaign — it's that his gig at OK! means he's in direct competition with his former buddy Wenner, whose Obama-leaning media empire publishes the tabloid Us Weekly. And that is awesome. How to make this do-si-do even more interesting? Mr. Brownridge: Might we suggest you getting firmly behind a one John McCain?
Britney definitely has some deal going on with OK! and this apparently includes online exclusives of her at home with the children, looking terrified/furious/uncomfortable. Jesus, turn the gritted teeth thing down a notch Brit; you're on 9, but they need you at 1:
CONTINUED »
What's this? Britney Spears is gracing the cover of OK! for the second time in as many weeks? Just last week the tabloid scored the first interview in something like two years — paparazzi shouting questions at her doesn't count — with the pop star in a cooperative arrangement, and this week Ms. Spears is showing off her new body in a clear "I've totally turned my life around" cover story. We don't have any firm evidence, yet, that OK! signed a cash deal with Spears like the one they did with her sister Jamie Lynn, but if it looks, acts, and sounds like something shady, isn't that enough?
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: CONTINUED »
This is the new cover of OK! magazine. It's the one Britney Spears agreed to participate in after a two-year hiatus. It's the one Britney Spears did not walk out of after ruining a Gucci dress and letting her dog shit on a Zac Posen gown. It's the one where she says she's "rather not" have her sons, Jayden and Preston, get into the entertainment industry while also pimping them out on the cover. It's the one where Britney, who gets like 4 hours a week with her kids, decided to spend her limited mother-son time in front of somebody else's camera. This, folks, is career resuscitation.
Now that's she's remaking herself into a pop star (it's 1999 all over again!), a cleaned up Britney Spears is filming promo spots for MTV's Video Music Awards (thus hinting that she'll return to the awards show) and, more importantly, delivering a sit-down interview to describe what life is like when you don't invite the paparazzi into your life and battle in court over custody of two children whose pregnancies you may have smoked through. CONTINUED »
What to do when another “Hollywood’s Best Dressed Ladies” piece would just be redundant and annoying?
OK! is quickly leaving behind the world of celebrity gossip to instead report exclusively on celebrity babies, as seen on the cover of the mag’s latest issue. After the horror of last week’s 80-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears feature, the admittedly beautiful Jessica Alba and baby Honor were a nice welcome this week — until Jess and her dim husband had to open their mouths.
The grossly outrageous sum of $20 million has been replaced by the moderately outrageous figure of $12 million — that's supposedly the latest asking price for the pictures of Angelina Jolie's new twins. While one might think People has a lock on the pics, because it's their nature to have a lock on these sort of things, OK!'s Richard Desmond has a trick up his sleeve: He gets to spread the cost around his 17 international editions of OK!. Or maybe Time Inc. will partner up with an international rag, like Hello, and find a clever way of splitting its costs, too.
The case could be made that we've already over-analyzed the over-analyzing of Brad and Angelina's baby twins as we tried to find the winners and the losers in previous nine months of baby speculation. But we did some digging through our tabloid archives and found a few shining stars among the blight, where some celebrity weeklies fared better in their guessing game — is she having a boy? a girl? twins? two girls? — than others.
It's not an exhaustive examination of every Brangelina-related baby cover of the past year, which would show that every tabloid got some info right and wrong at some point. But treat it as evidence that plenty of folks didn't really know what they were doing, and that "inside sources" could often be replaced by "magic 8-balls" or "Crazy Aunt Zelda." CONTINUED »
Sorry. No. Absolutely not.
The photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's new kids, Knox and Vivienne, will not be sold with a price tag as high as $20 million, as some outlets are reporting. Sure, "in the celebrity world, it seems to be the double-second coming," as Darryn Lyons, owner of paparazzi agency Big Pictures, tells it. But the fee that either People or OK! hands over, while enormous, will not even come close to the figures being reported. CONTINUED »
Jessica Alba and Cash Warren have reportedly joined Matthew McConaughey in selling her daughter Honor Marie's pics to OK!. While McConaughey supposedly scored a $3 million deal, which included his son's first photos plus his first Christmas, Alba secured just half that — $1.5 million for pics of the baby now and an upcoming holiday. Not that Alba's reduced fee should be any surprise.
While McConaughey is pulling in $12 million per movie, Alba's quote is a much more modest $2 million.
OK! has even more good news to celebrate. Not only did this week's issue feature their $1 million Jamie Lynn Spears' baby photo coup, and not only did they score Matthew McConaughey's baby pics in a $3 million multi-tier deal, but now editor-in-chief Sarah Ivens is getting married! We hear OK!'s chief, who's currently in London, just got engaged to a one Russell Moffett who she knew back when they studied at Kent together in the U.K. (He now lives in Kentucky.) A romance was rekindled this year — one source says as early as six weeks ago — and now word arrives from London that there's an engagement ring resting on her figure.
The endless race for the latest set of exclusive celebrity photos wraps another round, with OK! reportedly snapping up the first pictures of Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves' son Levi Alves, adding to this week's long-expected coup of Jamie Lynn Spears' new daughter Maddie. Of course, this is just a small battle compared to the People v. OK! bidding war for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's new bundle of paydays.
Update: The price for the pics? Three million dollars, says TMZ, with the deal including the baby's first Christmas pics too and the option to bid first on their weddings photos should they tie the knot.
Tom and Katie. Uh huh. Nicole and Keith. Uh huh, uh huh. Madonna and Guy. Yep, uh huh, but where's … ohh, there she is! It's Ms. Jamie Lynn Spears, American's latest teenager mother, at last popping out her daughter and making good on the $1 million deal she inked with OK! for the first exclusive photos and interview with the new mom and Maddie. That we are now celebrating and rewarding young, unwed women having children is an absolute delight to see on today's newsstand. On the plus side, the kid looks nothing like big sis Britney, so she's already got one leg up in the world. [OK!]
Editorial Director
