Us Weekly LLC

In today's New York Post, Keith Kelly reports that Jann Wenner may be trying to sell US Weekly to Condé Nast for $750 million.

That's a lot of scratch for pictures of Katherine Heigl getting Starbucks, but according to Kelly, the magazine is not only "lucrative" (he uses the term twice), but profitable as well:

With weekly paid circulation of more than 1.8 million—and the lucrative newsstand accounting for 1 million of that total—Us Weekly is highly profitable, with an operating profit last year estimated to be around $75 million.

"Us Weekly is one of the more remarkable success stories in recent publishing history," Mr. Kelly writes.  read more »

Here's one example of how Michelle Obama is, as the New York Times said in a profile of her today, "softening her image."

Did OK!, the celebrity gossip magazine, really pay $1 million for exclusive rights to the Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy story? US Weekly, a competing whisper weekly, seems to think so, going so far as to print the claim on the cover of US last week.

But, as an article in today’s Times points out, the prevalence of “checkbook journalism” is common among such publications. Paying celebs for exclusive photo and/or interview rights is hardly a novel notion.  read more »

ERICA: As I'm pondering getting my hair "un" highligted for the second time in 3 months, I'm flipping through Us Weekly and feeling seriously angry toward Lindsay Lohan. How is it that she looks fabulous whether her hair is platinum blonde, deep chestnut or fire engine red?! That just makes no sense and I'm insanely bitter about it.

I've been trying to perfect my hair color for over a year now. My natural color is sort of a "meh" librarian brown. A few months ago, I thought I should get it highlighted. I went to my favorite salon and came home looking like a striped cheetah. 3 days later, I went straight back to "meh" brown.  read more »

Then I started getting the itch again. Maybe they just didn't choose the right color for me? Maybe I should try someplace else? Don't I want my hair looking gaw-gous on my wedding day?

Since my rocker boyfriend unceremoniously dumped me last summer, I've been totally obsessed with my  read more »

Harvard University president Lawrence Summers recently got himself into a world of politically corre  read more »

When friends and gossip rub shoulders, strange things happen.For the worker bees at Us Weekly, when  read more »

It wasn't long ago that David Pecker, the 51-year-old who was catapulted to national attention when  read more »

Wednesday 18th We're up to our waist in June, Jenna Bush is about to start a long summer of b  read more »

Tamara had things to do-a list of phone calls to return, an overdue project from work, an incomplete  read more »

During Jann Wenner's boozy Nov.  read more »

The following Off the Record item comes from writer Josh Bernstein, who spent a couple of days at Th  read more »

It used to be that Jann Wenner only drove his own employees bonkers. Now he's driving Time Inc.  read more »

Call it Us (Mostly) Weekly .  read more »

The old muumuu-clad you–the jolly gal with more chins than the Peking phone book–she's gone fore  read more »