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Can anyone interpret how AdAge determined their Top 10 list for "outstanding accomplishment, growth, business and buzz among magazines?" Sure, it's been a tough year fiscally for all publications, but listicles in general are tough if they rely on "fuzzy math" to determine criteria such as oustandingness and growth.

Just looking at the front two contestants, The Economist and Women's Health, you see that while both publications saw a general increase in sales, ad pages, and subscriptions, WH had much larger percentage increases than The Economist in every category. The Economist may have had more ad pages overall, but they are still far below the numbers of New York magazine or Conde Nast Traveler, who nonetheless saw decreases in their pages and are featured much lower on the Top Ten list.

Make up your mind, AdAge: either create an easy formula for quantifying a magazine's success and share it with the rest of the class, or think of a more inventive way to celebrate magazines than another useless list that is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Hey, dumb Americans, did all this poly-tikkin' going on have you worried you were going to have to get the fuck out of the Applebee's booth and start paying attention to the world around you? Well you just stay put and order another helping of the crispy cheesy chili crab salsa rolls—the world is coming to you!

Fancy pants magazines The Economist and The Atlantic are out to become part of the mass market and prove to hoi polloi that they're not your rich white grandfather's stuffy publications anymore. How are they going about doing this? One way is muffins.

CONTINUED »

Are Americans dumber than Britons? Probably! Or, at least according to Jon Friedman's "Are You Smart Enough to Enjoy the Economist?" column today, it's true.

Jon says "the Economist's content may be too meaty for a country that once celebrated a show called Beavis and Butthead." Always edgy, that Friedman. Maybe next he'll tell us about that newfangled Jackass.

But he may have a point – *shudder* – when he says an American population accustomed to reading Time magazine might find The Economist more challenging: "Time's recent cover featuring actor George Clooney, titled 'The Last Movie Star,' probably suits the U.S. palate better than much of the Economist's standard fare."

Time just can't compete with The Economist's political coverage, even when it comes to American politics, which, and we're just riffing here, a British rag might face a steeper hill covering.

Take the Feb. 26th Democratic debate. The Economist has a fairly thorough, well-thought out piece that mentions the candidates' specific positions on Iraq, NAFTA, and health care, and discusses how many delegates each needs to win. And that's a web-only piece! Time had, well, this front-of-the-book report card blurb.

We're not letting Friedman totally off the hook, though. Comparing The Economist to Time is akin to comparing The Guardian to the New York Post. A fairer comparison would have been between The Economist and Harper's, which has found an American audience even in our our charticle-addicted, Clooney-loving nation.

The Economist has lost its appeal to get theeconomist.com website. The domain is owned by a random guy in Maryland and is dedicated to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. The magazine tried to buy it off of him for $500 last August. The proprietor refused to sell. Instead of offering more capital, the magazine spent their money on lawyers and take the case to World Intellectual Property Organization. The WIPO rejected their case.

Maybe The Economist never took Economics, but when there’s a high demand for a limited supply, $500 won’t buy you anything.

There’s no better way to promote a new movie than appearing in the Economist’s The World in 2008, at least for Angelina Jolie.

Jolie, who stars in the upcoming Beowulf adaptation, has a piece on the accountability in Darfur for the Economist’s annual spin-off book. Other contributors include the Dalai Lama, Mayor Bloomberg and Nancy Pelosi. Presumably, Jennifer Aniston was not invited to contribute.

In the book, she is described as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That’s the Economist’s way of pretending they didn’t use an actress to write about one of the greatest genocides of our time.

[Photo Credit: Wire Image]

• Poor, innocent model made to look like Anna Wintour was presumably advised, "it's less about furs, sunglasses and the bob-haircut, and more about acting like a 'huge fucking bitch.'"

• Dow director quits out of pure, unadulterated hatred towards Rupert Murdoch.

• In addition to "accidentally" portraying the Queen of England as a tantrum-throwing diva, the BBC has also inadvertently sponsored some fake phone-in competitions. For which they're truly sorry.

• FYI, The Economist's readers are younger, smarter, more educated—and way more influential—than you.

• C-Span's Brian Lamb gives such a fascinating interview (about his objections to living in a "celebrity culture") that even MarketWatch's Jon Friedman has trouble screwing it up.

• And speaking of the downsides of a celebrity culture, the "Hott 4 Hill" girl to shill for MSNBC.

• Conrad Black celebrates the start of his fraud trial by holing up at the Ritz Carlton.

• Two LA Times Pulitzer finalists nominated themselves. When questioned about it, they haughtily remarked, "well somebody had to do it!"

• With the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit heating up, Google suddenly needs to hook up with one of the "popular" media kids.

• Not just anyone can emulate The Economist's overly expensive and "aggressively boring" style!

• Will the publisher of Cookie join the leagues of Conde Nasters jumping to Reader's Digest? Who cares, you only read Teen Vogue, anyway.

• Stuff for sale! No, seriously, Stuff. As well as Maxim, Blender…

This just in: Iran has banned The Economist from their newsstands. In this astronomically controversial issue, the magazine committed an offense even worse than Keith Olbermann telling his readers to kill themselves.

Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely "the Gulf" in a map published in the latest edition, state television reported late Wednesday.

Anything but that! Well, maybe the fact that the Midwesterners still love their Economist will change their minds? Or, maybe we should just loan our dwindling terrorist protection funding to Chicago.

Iran bans The Economist over map [AP, J-Post]
50 BEST MAGAZINES [Chicago Tribune]

• Katie Couric should take all the luck she can get. [AP]

• Today in Britney Spears' uterus: Us Weekly says "Yes! She's Pregnant!" We say, aw no … not again. [Us Weekly]

• Ryan Seacrest and Paula Abdul continue to brawl. Too bad they won't just stab each other and call it a day. [People]

• Wait, people are quitting the Economist? But, we thought it was the best publication ever to exist in the history of media! [FBNY]

• Just when you thought you'd heard the last from Cindy Margolis, she lands right smack in the middle of Playboy. [AP]

• Keith Kelly uses his editorial clout to score free drinks for his fellow Irish medialites when they hit Elaine’s on St. Patty's. [Fishbowl NY]

• Arianna Huffington is so dunzo with George Clooney. We're still not convinced he gets what a blog is, though. [NYT, HuffPo]

• The Economist breaks from its Middle America campaign to rain down on Baltimore. [NYT]

• Those crazy "so called bloggers" and their inexplicible desire to so called write. [Newsday]

• It shouldn't take this long to come to the realization that the Internet is fast. [USA]

• As though anyone was holding their breath, New York announces the return of James Truman. [NYM]

• The flip side to the "bloggies need newspapers" argument comes from (who else?) NYU's Jay Rosen. [Press Think]

• A media hang-out for uber-geeks is on the rise, down in the the "new" Silicon Alley. [NYT]

• We don't know what you heard bout Tom Wolfe, but he just re-enforced the pimp/ho differentiation by swanking up his ride for street cred. And he doesn't even have a new book coming out. [NYT]

• Everyone hates journalists, except, of course, other journalists. (Hey, they're the ones who wrote the article.) [Miami Herold]

• It could be in the style of psychic Cindy Adams predictions, but Ed Carr is said to be "dead cert" to take the Economist's top spot. [Press Gazette]

• Maybe the The Economist's next study will be on The Economist's fleeing employees Bill Emmott and Beth O’Rorke. [MIN]

• So, Les Moonves didn't know he was paying for Sirius Satellite's advertisements? Was he simply not listening to Howard Stern's show? [NYT]

• MSLO scraps its kids publication. We hope this won't in anyway affect the much anticipated Blue Print. (Well, something needs to fill the Budget Living whole in our hearts.) [Media Week]

• Is Nancy Grace the televised version of faux memoirist James Frey? [NYO]

• Uh-oh, Donald Trump's ratings hit an all-time low. See what happens when you piss off the Martha? [FOX]

• Rupert Murdoch brings the New York Post to Boston, but snubs his old Herald pal Pat Purcell, and goes for the Globe. [Boston Globe]

• Wow, a biography of Condi Rice? Elisabeth Bumiller should write a guide on how not to end up on the Best Sellers list. [NYO]

The nerdy kids over at The Economist face their worst fears and hit a newsstand in search for tabloids. Their goal? To discover the dark underbelly behind the gloss of these quote-unquote "trashy magazines" of American Media Inc. (known to most as necessary gym gear and subway literature).

According to these investigatory journalists, the tabloids are victims of their own sales secrets. Translation: AMI isn't selling covers because all the mags look alike.

Half-a-dozen publications now use exclamation marks on their covers to describe the divorces, pregnancies, affairs, eating disorders and assorted depravities of the same small group of celebrities—notably Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, “TomKat” (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), Jennifer Aniston and, most important, Angelina Jolie and her “bump”.

Hello? They totally forgot the nicknames K-Fed and Brangelina — not to mention the A-Listers of eating disorders, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie. Despite those few additions, though, The Economist may still think that the tabs will run out of celebrities.

Mabye the celeb pool will continue to shrink. But we just know the endless stories of celebrities breaking up, throwing up, and public pantie-flashing will keep everyone employed for at least another five years.

Trashy magazines junked! [The Economist]

• Time Inc. is running around telling advertisers it was hit with a U.S. Attorney's Office subpoena back in July concerning its circulation practices. But the real question is: How'd this stay under wraps since July? C'mon, leakers!

• Speaking of circulation lies, OK!'s initially dismal figures of 200,000 might actually clock in even lower.

• Former ABC correspondent Richard Gizbert slapped his ex-employer with a $4.2 million lawsuit, alleging the Disney-owned network didn't renew his contract because he refused to go war zones to report.

• NBC is joining the New York Times in the layoff game with Jeff Zucker and Steve Capus telling staffers they can expect some "rebuilding" and budget crunching in the coming months.

• It's only fitting that the same week The Economist is opening up its fee-protected wall of content to influential bloggers, Gawker opens up its new comments feature to, ahem, influential bloggers.

• Forbes is making its regular listicle rounds, this time with The Forbes 400. It won't spoil much of the surprise to reveal Bill Gates is at the top.