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.
It's the $1.99 factor too, and that you can get all your celebrity gossip and photos online for free
Us weekly is the best of the celeb-gossip tabloids. I never see anything else being read by retarded shopgirls on the subway. In Touch might make money in sales volume, but look inside - there are no advertisements. Us has plenty.
Yeah, I only read it when no one is looking - but I find the photo captions that double as body copy to be concise, and entertaining. A big bang for a very little cerebral effort.
And I like that.
Us is old news. There are so many other magazines out there with celeb news and the bloggers are scooping the news which Us now takes and elaborates on in the mag. Nothing new in those pages. Bloggers have become the magazine's new best friend.
There's also the mistake on page 22 of the January 8th issue, where Denise and Charlie's youngest daughter "Lola" is misidentified as "Sam." But I'll cut them some slack for all these mistakes, it's all the staffers hitting that holiday eggnog in the fact checking department I guess
What she needs is a brain! you would think that someone who is 25 and is a mother of two..twice divorced..would grow up and grow some sense! you don't have to be poor to act like trash and she proves that all right!