In your sumptuous Tuesday media feast: Celebrity mags flounder, interns replace reporters, Ron Burkle's steaming mad, the New Yorker has jokes, and more!

Celebrity magazines in trouble! New circulation figures show that in the second half of '08, In Touch and Life & Style both saw circulation fall about 30%, and Star and the National Enquirer were both down more than 10%. Ironically, OK! was only down about 3%, but they're the ones who can't hang onto an editor, because of (real or manufactured) fear they'll fold soon. The only real magazine showing solid gains was The Week, which is essentially a printed blog.



Every day, it seems, there's another story showcasing just how low the entire journalism industry has fallen. Here's today's: The Toronto version of the free daily Metro has laid off all of its paid writers, and now puts the entire paper out with unpaid interns. WHOA. This "How low can journalism go?" will culminate in a story about everyone in journalism being dead, with pee on their lifeless bodies. [Pictured: an intern]



Slate is launching a French version of its site. Didn't think it was possible for Slate to be more condescending? Slate is launching a French version of its site.

Ron Burkle's Source Interlink magazine wholesale company is suing the nation's largest magazine publishers, alleging that they're all conspiring to drive Source Interlink out of business, stemming from an earlier conflict over a proposed seven-cent surcharge on shipping magazines, which caused much consternation within the publishing industry. This all supports my thesis that there is little in the media more boring than magazine wholesalers, but hey, look at Ron Burkle the hot bachelor, ha.




New Yorker editorblogger Ben Greenman—recently reprimanded by us, on behalf of David Denby, for allowing 'snark' to creep into his work, thereby tainting that great magazine's entire legacy—has posted a new humorous work. But this one centers on Bernard Madoff, a man of sufficient public and political significance to render this work solidly 'not snarky.' Is it now fair to say that the New Yorker's entire editorial strategy is being driven by the backlash to David Denby's crappy book?; in other words, that this very blog is now the 'Man Behind the Curtain,' pulling the psychological strings at our nation's most prestigious magazine, thereby setting the de facto intellectual agenda of the nation? Well we can't stop you from saying that, we're not the police.


Alex Balk's plan to save the press: a tax on stupidity.