While fingering Us Weekly for going three weeks in a row fingering the mistakes of others is still good fun, the other tabloids have different things on their mind. Or not.

As we learn from Intern Joseph's salt licking of this week's celebrity glossies, there's little out there besides what Reader's Digest is printing about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. So let's get to it.

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It's time to play our new favorite weekly game called "Who Is Us Weekly Picking on Now?" Sure, we may have already ruined the surprise yesterday – when we learned Janice Min was using her third straight week of calling bullshit on other tabloids to once again go after Bauer – but who says there's no fun in going in depth on two pages of bitchslaps?

Again this week, Us's ire is directed at In Touch and Life & Style, calling them out on all their baby news mistakes. Like when In Touch's June 26, 2006, cover declared "Jen Looks Pregnant," or when Life & Style's Jan. 1, 2006, cover claimed Angelina and Brad were working on baby number two.

Us is, of course, in the business of refuting pregnancy rumors. Like they did with Christina Aguilera. Or with Reese Witherspoon. Or with Britney Spears. It's just too bad those "ANGELINA NOT PREGNANT!!%@#^@#!" covers don't sell as well.

This just in: For the third week in a row, and as we hoped for, Us Weekly is tackling the competition. We hear EIC Janice Min is running another attack on her fellow tabloids – sticking to Bauer again this week – pointing out just how bad they get it wrong when it comes to celebrity baby news.

It pains us to keep doing this, but really, should Us be the one to call out others on bungling baby news?

In the end, who cares? We'll see you here tomorrow with the recap.

We're witnessing history here, folks. Something that perhaps you've never witnessed before is taking place: People.com is crediting another source for a breaking story.

And not just any source, but the direct competition. In Touch, to be precise. Why so groundbreaking? Because People.com is known throughout the industry as one to never give credit for where a story breaks; they simply phone up a star's rep or find a "friend" to confirm a story. (To be fair, People.com isn't alone in the practice.)

But today's instance – with the story about Denise Richards and Richie Sambora breaking up – is "no accident." A well-placed tattler reports People.com is "joining hands" with In Touch, intentionally playing nice with the Bauer tab, all as a maneuver to … wait for it, wait for it … go on the Us Weekly assault. Both In Touch and People "hate them."

And no wonder: For two weeks straight (will tomorrow's issue make three?), Us has dedicated double pages to calling out the mistakes of others while keeping mum on its own. What's next, a Star-OK! tryst?

Who would've imagined Us Weekly would've had the balls to show its face – wearing somebody else's story – on the newsstand today after last week's blunder in calling out the mistakes of other tabloids while refusing to face its own. But balls they do have! Just flip to p.52 of this week's issue and you'll see Janice Min's low hangers: Another two-pager from Mark Cina on the competition.

This week, he's focusing exclusively on Bauer's Life & Style and In Touch, going all the way back to 2005 to call bullshit on some Brad and Angelina cover stories.

But really, should a celeb rag that claimed, with absolute certainly, that Shiloh Jolie-Pitt was at the hotel in Vietnam with papa Brad during the Pax adoption – when she was actually at home in Los Angeles – be pointing fingers?

Us Weekly just doesn't learn. After last week's very public blow up – printing the mistakes of other tabloids, while refuting its own errors and blatant fictionalized facts – now they're trying to book execs to explain their side of things. Phones have rang at MSNBC and CNN in the hopes of booking Wenner Media's talking heads to show how Us Weekly gets it right while the competition gets it wrong.

It's times like this that we miss Katrina Szish most.

Don't get us wrong: We have exactly zero personal grudges with Janice Min (though it'd be nice if she started replying to our emails again), much as we don't have personal grudges with anyone, really. (Even Marty Singer is a Friend of Jossip, little does he know.) But when she puts herself out there, as she does in this week's Us Weekly on page 70, she must know by now that we're going to call her on it.

So here we have "All The News That's Fake: That's faux biz! A Look at 'stories' too shocking to be true." Mark Cina is signed up to look at the competition – Northern & Shell's OK!, Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style, and AMI's Star ("led" by Janice's former boss) – and find out where those other glossies took the story too far.

There's OK!'s J. Lo-Marc Anthony split, In Touch's boob jobs (debunker: celeb publicists deny their clients had work done!), Life & Style claiming Jennifer wants Brad back, and Star's claim that Katie was thinking about divorcing Tom.

But this is the tabloid biz. And try as she might, even Janice isn't immune to getting it wrong.

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Larry Hackett can rest assured that he owns the personal trauma niche. After Bauer's In Touch attempted to invade on People's territory by slapping the Virginia Tech tragedy on the cover last week, editor Richard Spencer saw newsstand sales slide. A normal 1.2 million sales clip stumbled to just 900,000, or below, making it the worst selling issue in a year. (Loose-lipped enemies will say two years.)

And in other news from Keith Kelly: Life & Style had its best week ever, notching 900k at the newsstand (congrats, Pasetsky!), while Us Weekly's own 900k copies were down from last year's 1 million. Meanwhile, Bauer chief Hubert Boehle has approved plans to test half of Life & Style and In Touch issues with a jump in the $1.99 newsstand price to $2.19.

Which is just their way of saying: If you're not going to buy our heartfelt issue about a college campus mourning, you're gonna have to pay a premium for half-truths about Angelina Jolie.

At last, an explanation as to why, after gorging on Us Weekly and People, you're still hungry for In Touch and MollyGood.

As a disciple of all things evolutionary, I n think of one explanation. Cave women who survived were skilled in how to walk the walk and talk the talk that would get them the biggest piece of meat from the strongest hunter (I know, not an especially feminist ideal, but we're talking evolution here). If they were alive today, they'd be reading these magazines to find out what kind of animal skins they should wear to attract the best mate and who fell where in the social pecking order.

So perhaps we women are wired from long ago to care about these sorts of things since our relationships were the key to our survival. For men, predatory skills were more advantageous. They'd rather just look at a half-naked Angelina than learn all about her postpartum body, her multiracial adoptions and her marriage what-ifs with Brad Pitt.

One note of caution: This sound piece of reasoning comes from Dr. Laura Berman, who – in between appearing on CNN and the Today show – recommends tantric sex for couples whose intimacy is on the wane.*

* For us, that's a stamp of approval on her authority. For you, perhaps not.

Let us be the first to introduce you to OK!'s latest marketing gimmick, premiering with this week's issue that hit newsstands today. See that yellow circle in the upper left corner? It reads, "50¢ Less Than Us Weekly." Naturally, it's styled to make the impulse purchaser at the checkout line think the tabloid only costs 50 cents — a trick that publisher Richard Desmond has exported from his UK tabloid Daily Star.

Can't wait to see gimmick cause newsstand numbers to jump … for a whole week.

(Click image for larger version)

Anna Nicole Smith dying on a Thursday was (and let's be honest here) good news for most entertainment press outlets, who were able to get the story out last night and all today before the weekend brought with it the usual snooze button of the news cycle. But for the tabloids, a story breaking on a Thursday is never good news — that week's issues are already on the newsstands and it'll be another week before they can update supermarket shoppers on the latest.

Which doesn't put tabloid editors in very good spirits.

An American Media insider tells us the mood was at a boil over at Star magazine yesterday, with top editors rushing to put together copy for the barely acknowledged website. Staffers at Us Weekly and In Touch, we're told, are still struggling to find a way to play the story in their magazines — and so far, they're coming up short.

Says one Us insider: "They don't have any idea what the angle is going to be so far. It's too late to break the news in the magazine, so now they need a fresh angle … and every time they think they come up with something, they see the headline already broke on TMZ."

Meanwhile, over at In Touch, a tattler relays: "By the time Tuesday rolls around to close the issue, all of the news will have already been in Page Six or on TMZ or, hell, even on Jossip. I'm sure we'll end up going with something about the aftermath, like what this means for her new baby [Dannielynn] and all the paternity tests."

And as for OK!? Well, we're sure Jessica Simpson can provide a paid-for cover. She sorta looks like Anna Nicole anyhow.

When we stumbled upon Newsweek's call to arms about the Lindsays and Parises of the world launching a whole new generation of "prosti-tots," all we could think was, "Well, at least it's not in Sunday Styles." The article's message: Overexposure by Nicole Richie and her kin are harming America's female youth, and it's time to act! up!

A recent NEWSWEEK Poll found that 77 percent of Americans believe that Britney, Paris and Lindsay have too much influence on young girls.

Perhaps that has something to do with the 77 percent of Americans who subscribe to, purchase at the newsstand, or borrow friends' copies of Us and People.

No? The two are completely unrelated?

If ever there were a MySpace profile we wanted to befriend, it is, undoubtedly, "Fans Against the Paparazzi." With 21 (!) friends and counting, Fans has just one central mission: celebrate celebrities without attacking them. As if there were another way.

Its mission is clear: "STOP BUYING WEEKLY TABLOID MAGAZINES WHO SUPPORT PAPARAZZI BY PURCHASING AND PRINTING THEIR CANDIDS!"

Somehow lost in the message, however, is an asterisk about "continue buying the tabloids who set up arrangements with celebrities to shoot 'candid' photos in exchange for a fat profit sharing arrangement."

Below you'll find a list of tabloid and weekly magazines to BOYCOTT, as well as photo agencies we are asking them to STOP SUPPORTING.

- globe magazine
- hello!
- in touch weekly
- life & style
- national enquirer
- ok! magazine
- people magazine
- planet sun
- star magazine
- us weekly

AGENCIES TO STOP SUPPORTING:

X17 AGENCY (the most vicious!)
alloverpress
angeli
celebrity babylon
east news
isifa
flynet
lfi
matrix
mavrix
pacific coast news
rex features
splash news

After the jump, the full email sent out by FATP to tabloid editors, paparazzi, and the like. You know, anyone who participates in the practice of harassing the men and women who so diligently pick up seven- and eight-figure cheques for appearing on screen.

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What People always thought it was, TMZ is. Breaking stories the moment they happen. Inundating readers with enough photo and video clips and montages to make Madonna's concert opener jealous. Bringing the world more Harvey Levin. (Okay, so perhaps People never had that in mind.)

So it makes sense, then, that the tabloid magazines are wising up to this Internet craze and realizing, "Hey, they're stealing our readers! We should do something about that! Oh, what, there are no glossy pages? Well, maybe next year."

Star tried going bloggy in print, and you saw the field day of punchlines that incident caused. But now Wenner Media's Us Weekly is teaming up with Veoh – the video sharing site that isn't YouTube – to create its own celebrity channel.

That the deal also reunites Us-owner Jann Wenner and former-Us-investor-and-current-Veoh-moneybag Michael Eisner is, unto itself, just thrilling. We're nearly at Defcon 5 here, people.

Meanwhile, the new video channel launches next month and, according to whatever press release they're issuing, will of course amount to more than just a random smattering of Splash News paparazzi clips and sixth-graders lip-syncing to "Stars Are Blind." So in tune with You and Your needs and Your wants and Your desires, Us and Veoh are going to let the average person upload a celebrity-related clip to their channel.

According to Janice Min, the editor in chief of Us Weekly, Usmagazine.com and its Veoh channel will aim at a specific demographic group, rather than trying to directly challenge powerful online establishments like YouTube and TMZ.

“We’re the only celebrity Web site that really speaks to a very specific audience of women in their 20s and 30s,” she said. “As more competitors and the Internet cover celebrity, it’s only furthered the interest in celebrity. The appetite seems boundless.”

"Seems boundless?" If ever there were last words we ache to make famous, these are them.

But with all earnestness we can muster: Good luck with your little vlogging experiment!

Because unless Wenner quickly learns how to exploit UsMagazine.com editor Noelle Hancock like ABC News Now is doing Amanda Congdon, we fear the worst.

If you're like most Americans, you've already let Courtney Cox's Dirt fall off your radar. Sure, former Friend Jennifer Aniston might be popping in for the season finale, but why waste your time with plotlines, character development, and the episodic filler during the weeks leading up to the finale when you can catch what you need to know on YouTube, anyhow?

Nonetheless, we're moving forward with our mission to deliver high-brow critiques from those with insider gossip rag knowledge. Unfortunately we only have delivery from one of our tabloid twosome, but it's plenty. The full report from Tabloider No. 1, after the jump — with ruminations on libel lawyers, publicists who deliver press releases in person, and a subject close to home for Ms. Aniston.

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We're already feeling overloaded with Courteney's Cox (and ginormous balls), but alas, we made a committment to ourselves that we would see this Dirt show through the end-ish — which means it's time for round two of Dishin' The Dirt, our on-going feature where we have two high-level tabloid insiders weigh in on the realities of Lucy Spiller's fictional world of celebrity sex tapes and editors-in-chief getting their own coffee.

In our first installment, our pair of gossip industry veterans pointed out some obvious missteps by Lucy Spiller & Co. Among them: an editor-in-chief would never get her own caffeine dose, for one — and second, she'd never be so technologically inclined that she can whip around on her Treo and PowerPoint at the same time.

This week, Dirt brings us a whole new round of tabloid misrepresentations, like a glossy gossip editor giving a shit about winning an ASME award, or letting a lowly assistant dive into the trenches of investigative reporting. Let's check in to see where Tabloiders One and Two stand.

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Sure, Courteney Cox's Dirt may have already jumped the shark, but it's not everyday a television show comes around that's centered around the industry you obsess over – okay, perhaps it happens more often than you think) — so our only choice was to exploit the new FX series for all it's worth.

With Cox playing the fictional Bonnie Fuller, we thought in only appropriate to check in with a pair of tabloid insiders (and we mean really, really inside) to see how the TV version differs from the real life experience of badmouthing starlets and pointing out where their cellulite can be found. Naturally, because our tabloid twosome want to hang on to their industry gigs, theire identities shall remain in the shadows. But trust us — this pair has been around the block; they're not some low level floozies.

After the jump, you'll find reports on Dirt's premiere. And while there are some differences in viewpoints, it's interesting to note that both authors ended their copy pointing out one crucial plot flaw: Bonnie Fuller would never get her own coffee.

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Most of you know Jill Ishkanian as the ex-Us Weekly staffer who started her own paparazzi agency and is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly hacking into Us' computers to glean information about celebs and their whereabouts. (The less sexy version of this story involves the Wenner Media tabloid forgetting to disable Jill's email account and her continuing to check it.)

But Jill (seen here at right, with former bosses Janice Min and Ken Baker) is more than a FBI case folder, the figurehead behind Sunset Photo and News, and business partners with Kitson owner Fraser Ross — which might have a little something to do with why there's so much fun going on between Kitson and Us. Jill is also the gal behind new web venture CelebrityBabylon.com. Refusing to call it a celebrity blog (and, to be fair, it looks to have more bells and navel rings than a typical blog), this "online magazine" is a decent mix of tabloid gossip, paparazzi photos, fashion and style commentary, and ego massaging.

Though the formal announcement about Celebrity Babylon is expected after the New Year, we checked in with Jill to see what the site is all about. And as Jill explains it, CB is all about synergy, baby: She's got the photos and gossip from her own paparazzi agency, so why be relegated to only one income stream (photo licensing) when she can be her own Perez Hilton?

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• WSJ readers like planes, not as interested in trains, automobiles.

• Thin is good! Thin is bad! Tabloids are passive-aggressive! Which is good! And bad!

• NFL tries, fails at gouging cable providers.

• Ousted Viacom exec Tom Freston finds a new hobby in Plum TV.

• Sure, Reader's Digest is getting bought for $1.6 billion by Ripplewood, but that pricetag is $150 million shy of what it could've been.

• If you say it fast enough, "B.M.I." sounds like the noise a purger makes while booting.

• Microsoft hands out free computers, bloggers everywhere post items from their new free computers questioning ethics of accepting free computers.

Timothy McDarrah's conviction notwithstanding, this week has not been good for Us Weekly.

First, let us direct you to this week's review of I'm From Rolling Stone, the reality show of from the Wenner Media rag's corporate cousin. Sure, even the average reality shlock can land a favorable review in Janice Min's pages, but the 3.5 out of 4 star recommendation comes off a bit, ahem, forced. (To be fair, Us did disclose ownership ties.)

Is Jann Wenner's on-screen presence really a full star better than Seinfeld: The E! True Hollywood Story? (Well, perhaps.)

Also in this week's issue, on p. 44, we've got son-of-John Jason Ritter introducing readers to girlfriend Monica Keena. which is a lovely gesture, except Ritter's gal is Marianna Palka (photo here). Ritter's only connection to Keena? They co-starred in Feddy vs. Jason.

Says one tabloid industry insider: "This rounds off a disastrous year for Us with newsstand sales sliding. They’re set to announce official figures in a few weeks and they will have slipped by at least 100,000 issues. They say they sell one million on the newsstands but haven’t hit that figure since their Janet Jackson issue last summer."

Sure, Us may have misreported the birthdates of Britney Spears' and TomKat's babies, claimed George Clooney was dating a Deal or No Deal girl he'd never met, and asseted Mario Lopez and Eva Longoria were dating (both reps deny it) — but it's not like the year's been good to any tabloids. Well, unless they're tabloids published by Bauer.