Way to go, celebrity media! You forced Samantha Who? star Christina Applegate to come forward about her breast cancer struggle way ahead of when she wanted to go public. Which explains why she was on this morning's Good Morning America revealing that shortly after being diagnosed with cancer in one breast, and testing positive for the "breast cancer gene," she had a double mastectomy and removed both breasts. Over the next eight months, she'll have reconstructive surgery to give her "the best boobs in the nursing home."

Says fellow cancer survivor Robin Roberts, who interviewed Applegate (video here): "She wanted to dispel some false reporting that was out there. She wasn't really ready to go public yet. But there was some false reporting that was out that she was going to undergo chemotherapy, which she is not. There were other false reports saying that she was putting off chemotherapy to start a family, that she wanted to get pregnant. She does want to have a family one day, but that is not the reason she made her choice."

So who was out there ruining Applegate's life? Well, Star magazine for one.

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Joe Dolce, the former Star editor-in-chief who was ushered out with Bonnie Fuller, is trying to generate an income from DolceGoldin, the media strategy firm he formed with former MSNBC editorial director Davidson Goldin. His new agency's biggest client is none other than Oprah foe James Frey — and Frey's ability to get the media to come around to him, even writing positive book reviews about his latest effort, whether their doing or not, is great marketing for their little firm. It's also a chance for Dolce to shed his bad boy tabloid past, where he was all too complicit in the paparazzi-celebrity-magazine exchange, where cash changed hands for stalkerazzi pics, and everybody excused their behavior with "this is what the public wants" excuses. The same line drug dealers use!

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As if we haven't already dissected the science of tabloidss reporting on the sex of celebrities' babies, Star gives us another reason to do so, claiming Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson are expecting a girl. This, according to "an insider," which might as well be a coin toss when it comes to having actual knowledge of this sort of thing.

Need we even remind you of Star's track record here?

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Because the two most important things to an editorial cog in the media industry is 1) who is reading you; and 2) how much you are being paid, we shall note that Ben Widdicombe's new editor-at-large gig at Star will earn the ex-Gatecrasher some $125,000 a year. As we understand it, this sum is less than he was earning at the Daily News, but there he was required to file a daily column and party until the wee hours, where at Star he must merely run around town for on-camera gossip reports. (He also plans to attend weekly story meetings at the magazine.) More interesting, though, is that Widdicombe's take home pay is the same as his predecessor Julia Allison, whose one-year deal at the magazine also earned her a reported $125k. That Widdicombe — a veteran gossip columnist who might actually know what he's talking about without researching TMZ.com 10 minutes before taking a live shot — isn't getting a bump in pay from Allison's take must surely be evidence of strict budget restrictions at AMI. It doesn't make it any less appalling that talent is not paid accordingly.

With Julia Allison effectively fired from her Star talking head gig (and Bonnie Fuller no longer there to protect her contract), who's going to step in to represent the AMI tabloid on the airwaves? Retired Daily News gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe, says CoverAwards.com. Indeed, putting together a daily column with original gossip is a tough gig — but flipping through Star, scanning TMZ.com, and checking celebrities blogs' RSS feeds is a much cushier arrangement.

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."

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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?

There's this rumor going around that OK! magazine owner Richard Desmond is hiring Bonnie Fuller, she being the former American Media editorial director and Star leader, to run his American exclamation point tabloid.

Fuller, who just left a $2 million-plus payday with David Pecker, is starting her own company, Bonnie Fuller Media, which by all accounts is some sort of digital (and maybe some TV) venture with backing from former Viacom exec Russ Pillar.

The rumor says there are "protracted talks" between Fuller in Desmond, who is said to be looking for a high-profile EIC to replace Sarah Ivens, who's been running the tabloid since it launched on American shores. The U.S. OK!, which Desmond reportedly sunk $100 million into (though, because he pays in British pounds, he gets everything half off), has seen circulation increase, but not enough to really compete with more established players like In Touch or Us Weekly. Which might explain why we're also told Desmond made overtures to Us editor Janice Min, who declined.

So is Fuller taking over at OK!? No, say well-placed informants. But it's true Desmond did reach out to her.

Which leaves only one real question:

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You'll have to wait ANOTHER FULL QUARTER!!! to learn whether Bonnie Fuller, having left AMI as editorial director, earned the $2 million severance package she was gonna get if she left the company in March, since she stayed until May. In the meantime, know this: Fuller was on track to earn $2.4 million in 2008, up from $2.1 million in 2007 — both more than David Pecker's paycheck of $1.6 million in '08. [WWD]

In the July issue of Portfolio, now-former American Media editorial director Bonnie Fuller took over the back page to do two things: Wrap her arms around an issue of Star, and reveal almost nothing about where she's headed from here.

Then, in the Times's Sunday Business section, she did something similar: She posed in the same position (sans tabloid) and said, well, almost nothing about where she's headed from here.

Despite what one errant blogger may claim, Ms. Fuller is the Queen of All Media.

From YM and Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan to Us Weekly and Star, Fuller has earned – some might argue rightfully – a reputation as a ball-busting, no-nonsense editor who routinely brought her staff for a visit to the brink of sanity all in the name of a close. And now that she's heading off on her own, with a venture aptly titled Bonnie Fuller Media, and funding from former Viacom interactive chief Russ Pillar's 5850 Group, perhaps it's time to stop counting all of Fuller's flaws, sand your bedpost smooth, and begin notching her successes.

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You know what you get when you're a celebrity and you sign an exclusive deal with a tabloid? Bad karma from the rest of the magazines.

Jamie Lynn Spears, who signed a $1 million exclusive deal with OK! for her pregnancy story and pics, is getting stabbed by Star with a dramatic cover story exclaiming, "Delivery Room Drama!" Since Spears is prohibited from playing ball with the other celeb weeklies, there's only one thing Star can do: deliver one piece of bad news after another. If only Spears hadn't signed with OK!, she could've scored some protection.

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Web 2.0 anomaly Julia Allison has lost her television gig as a talking head for Star. Earning a reported $125-150k, it was Allison's job to appear on television for the tabloid whenever there was a bit of gossip worth reporting on; Allison would then chronicle how she used The Google to brush up on said gossip because she, having not actually worked at Star, knew only what the average gossip blog reader did. Also: This is now Bonnie Fuller's job. [NYP]

It wasn't an episode of Ashton Kutcher's forgettable Pop Fiction, but you've got to respect Nicole Richie and Joel Madden's prank on the press: by playing into Star magazine's (false) report that the two were getting married in a $2 million ceremony.

On Saturday, Madden updated GoodCharlotte.com to say "WE DID IT!! NICOLE AND I FINALLY GOT MARRIED!! click here for the pictures!!" And pictures there were: Of a wedding cake, and a, um, gorilla groom and bride, along with a note, "Haha, just kidding."

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Former AMI editorial director and current Star brand extension Bonnie Fuller makes another go her little comedy routine on The DL. Listen to her get excited about Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan making out! Also, listen to the crudest episode of this series so far! [Spinner]

Taking a break from shooting All Good Things on the Upper West Side, Kirsten Dunst tells E!'s Marc Malkin that she didn't go to Cirque Lodge to get treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, but simply because she was depressed. "I was struggling, and I had the opportunity to go somewhere and take care of myself. I was fortunate to have the resources to do it. My friends and family thought it was a good idea, too. But I didn't know where to go. My doctor recommended Cirque Lodge."

Except Cirque Lodge would've recommended somewhere else.

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