Wenner sent out this memo to his staff late yesterday afternoon. It seems designed to quash the gossip and speculation about whether Steele is, in fact, Janice Min's replacement, or just a placeholder until Wenner can find someone he likes better. Though as with all Wenner employees, he's only one Jann mood swing away from doom at any given time.

Dear Us Staff:

I want you to join me in congratulating Mike Steele in his promotion to acting editor in chief.

As you know, Mike has been an integral part of making Us Weekly successful, working side-by-side with Janice for more than five years. He is a quiet and steady presence who has proven adept at both editing and managing, and certainly by this point he's more than used to having the reins turned over to him when Janice is away. Contrary to any speculation out there, Mike is my one and only choice. He has my full vote of confidence.

More important, rest assured, this magazine works, and there are no plans for radical change: We will be reporting newsstand numbers the same as last year's for this half to ABC (a huge accomplishment when all our competitors are down double-digits); additionally, Us Weekly has maintained a very strong ad position in the marketplace. The growth of our website is extraordinary - 6.6 million unique visitors for the month of May. All in all, everything is humming, I have full confidence things will continue on course, and I ask you to join me and Mike in making that happen.

Thanks for all your continued hard work, and I'm looking forward to even more success.

Jann

[Pic: Getty]

Hoda Kotb is speaking out on her job and stuff! She was rejected 27 times before she landed her first TV job 20 years ago. She was a Tri-Delt in college! "With Kathie Lee, she's insane — completely insane," Hoda says, speaking the truth. Is that why you drink, Hoda? We like you!


John Koblin reminds us that this is not the first time that Conde Nast has called in the dreaded McKinsey consultants, to kill people on its staff:

Back in 2001, Condé Nast had hired McKinsey to help streamline the company's finance and human-resource divisions and develop a back office for employees in Delaware. That was a time when Condé Nast was blooming into a grown-up company. This time …"It's worse," said a source.

Mercy! Apparently all of Conde Nast headquarters is currently a den of backbiting and stress. Uh, more than usual. Our survival guide seems more important now!


NPR has cruelly conned Jonathan Shia, one of its interns a guy they asked to write for their intern blog, into writing a tearjerking blog post about why he decided to enroll in Columbia Journalism School this fall, which is a horrible financial mistake. "For my part, at least, it's an expression of perhaps naïve optimism, a faith that journalism can never possibly cease to exist. Will there ever come a day when we have no interest in the world around us? Will we become so solipsistic that we no longer care about anything besides ourselves?" Please. Most journalists—particularly in Washington—become more interested in themselves the more successful they become. It's the goal to which journalists aspire.
Of the rise of the internet, Jonathan says: "I view this transformation with regret in part because I am old-fashioned and can think of nothing better than waking up to the morning newspaper outside my door...The vast majority of online writing-and I speak here with personal experience-is of a slapdash, ephemeral nature, created quickly with the explicit intention of a limited shelf life." You are too young to be old-fashioned, Jonathan. It is not mathematically possible. Or maybe it is? We haven't "fact-checked" because such things are optional on the internet, because hey, here today, gone tomorrow.
That's free advice that the J-school types won't tell you. Instead, they'll tell you horrible, nonsensical lies like this: "as my old editor told me, now is not only the worst time to go to journalism school, but also the best." It is not too late to withdraw, Jonathan. Because while you might spend all that money and come out without any career prospects, your old editors do have a career prospect: J-School professor. Don't encourage them.


Janice Min left Us Weekly and now she is talking about it! She denies that money was a factor in her decision to leave, and also denies that she's going into TV for her next gig. Mike Steele has been named her (apparently interim) successor, but she refuses to speculate on who might be his successor, if there is one. So if Janice Min goes on to a higher-paying job in TV, remember this day.

Here's the text of the memo sent to Us Weekly staffers:

Dear Us Staff,

After six years as the editor of Us Weekly, I am leaving. In short, I
decided it was time to try something else in my life, do a little Gosselin
detox and occasionally go out on Monday nights. There are no immediate
plans, except to enjoy the month of August, take some tennis lessons, and
maybe finally edit my wedding album.

With more certainty, I can say that it has been an immense privilege working
with every last one of you here. What we've done with this magazine is
unprecedented — you have helped make Us Weekly into one of the greatest
success stories in publishing history. Back in 2003, the year many of you
started with me,the magazine's rate base was 1 million; now it is nearly
double that at 1.9 million; we didn't have a website until recently, and now
it's one of the biggest entertainment websites with more than 6 million
unique visitors a month (up 328 percent in just one year!). Along the way
the magazine has received countless accolades - among them Ad Age's Magazine
of the Year and Top Performer of the Decade by Cappell's Circulation Report.
Most significantly, you've made Us Weekly into a phenomenal buzz machine,
synonymous with all things pop culture and celebrity. In Chasing Cool,
author Gene Pressman of Barneys devotes a section lauding Us Weekly. He
calls our magazine "the iPod of its industry," adding, "like crack on
newsprint, it made an entirely dormant segment into a monster loyal
audience." Indeed, it's always been one of the most gratifying things about
working here: to toil for a magazine not in vain, but for one that 13
million people actually read every week.

Last year, the LA Times said, "It's Us Weekly's world, we just live in it."
And now I will be just a spectator looking in. But I speak from the heart
when I say thank you for all you've done: the endless hours, never saying no
to any request, and for being all around fun, kind and generous people with
whom to spend my days and nights. I've never worked with such a fiercely
talented, dedicated, collegial and quality group of people. You made being
here pure joy and sorely will be missed.

Now, please join me in congratulating executive editor Mike Steele in his
promotion to interim editor in chief. Mike will be returning early from his
vacation on Wednesday to begin work.

As for me, my last day will be some time next week - and hopefully we will
have some kind of celebration (that doesn't involve Sterno!).

All best,
Janice

Min's future plans are unknown at this time, but she hinted to the New York Times that she might be considering a career change:

"As long as I'm here, I can't really even begin to think about what I'm going to do next," she said. "But I'm 39 and I'd like to have another career. I felt like I'd done every possible thing at US Weekly to make it successful."

P6 says that Min is "sick of the weekly grind," or possibly just figures that she can't possibly get another contract as big as her current $2 mil per year one, so she's leaving.

[A Wenner Media insider we talked to wouldn't comment on Min's future per se, but said that Us Weekly itself is doing fine, with annual revenue "estimated to be well over $300 million." They also disputed P6's assertion that Life & Style has outsold Us. And while P6 floats the name of former Min deputy Colleen Curtis as a possible successor for Min, our source says that Curtis was fired, and would never be selected as Min's successor. Backbiting-y!]

The more interesting part is that Min is allegedly in LA meeting with TV execs to figure out her next gig. You are playing the deadliest game, Janice!

Min has been at the helm of Wenner Media's Us Weekly since 2003, when Bonnie Fuller left to run Star magazine for more than $2 million a year. Fuller now works for a Web site.

A WEB SITE. Do you want to end up like that, Janice? A hobo with a laptop, desperately spouting random words about "celebrities?" For not even a lot of money, we mean? No, you do not. Janice Min was one of the last incredibly blessed individuals fortunate enough to land a multimillion-dollar magazine editing gig. It is quite possible that neither she, nor any other celeb mag editor who lived through the best of times, will ever top that. Once upon a time, after Talk magazine folded, Tina Brown also mentioned that she had plans to go out to LA and climb into the glamorous world of TV. Well. Where is Tina Brown today?

Running a web site. Watch out, Janice. Three is a trend.

ASME can't really do much to renegade publications, as explained earlier this month in the New York Times. The disciplinary steps are:

• A warning letter.
  
• Withholding a National Magazine Award.
  
• Forbidding a title's participation in the National Magazine Awards.
  
• Suspending an editor's membership.
  
• A really nasty look.
  
• Saying "stop!" a second time.
  
• Brazen taunting.
  
• Jann Wenner critiques the state of your desk each week.
• An internship with Bonnie Fuller.

Obviously, in an advertising depression, certain publications are willing to give up hope of a National Magazine Award in exchange for some much-needed cash. Especially if they never had much hope of getting such an award in the first place.

Us Weekly had every reason to know it was over the line. The celebrity magazine ran a mock cover pimping HBO's Grey Gardens, albeit with a different title font and the word "advertising" across the top. ASME told MediaWeek "advertising cannot obscure the cover in any manner whatsoever," which seems pretty clear.

Entertainment Weekly, part of the esteemed, ethically-concerned Time Inc. empire, got a spanking for turning its cover into "a pocket that contained a pull-out ad for the ABC show The Unusuals," in the words of the Times.

ESPN had a fold-out cover flap touting a pitch on the other side for Powerade.

All three got an ASME reprimand, which is just a warning.

The question now is how long it takes before highbrow titles follow in the footsteps of the celebrity titles. They tend to look to the National Magazine Awards to burnish their upscale positioning. And will ASME will hold to its standards when they do, or just capitulate in the name "economic reality?"

[MediaWeek]

(Pic via MediaWeek)

From: "mark armitage" <-—-@juno.com>
Date: September 3, 2008 9:58:33 PM EDT
Subject: your coverage of Bristol's pregnancy

Dear Ms. Min,

I am just simply thrilled that you folks have been so focused on Bristol Palin's pregnancy. It is rewarding to me that you liberals consider the plight of the unwed pregnant mother - so much so that you would put it on your cover. Amazing.

So let's have a close look at another unwed, pregnant mother, Mary Joe Keopeckne - who has no one to speak for her today because TED KENNEDY KILLED HER. Why don't you talk about that, since you are so concerned about the plight of the unwed mother?

This is your chance to completely avoid the charge of hypocrisy by holding yourself to the standard you have yourself erected. So let's see a cover devoted to that unwed mother Ms. Min. Do the right thing.

Mark Armitage, M.S., Ed.S
Los Angeles

And this slightly more direct message, from:

From: "Ella Wilmore" <-——-@gt.rr.com>
Date: September 3, 2008 6:34:22 PM EDT
Subject: You've got nerve, I'll give you that.

How dare you imply by your Sarah Palin cover headline: "Babies, Lies & Scandal" that there's any kind of scandal surrounding this candidate.

I’ll never read your piece of shit magazine again.

You extreme liberal assholes keep on enjoying each other's company. You are all nothing but scum. Read U. Talk U? How about FUCK U.

Okay Janice, my 295 cents:

From: "Moe Tkacik" <-—-@gawker.com>
Date: September 4, 2008 12:00:33 PM EDT
Subject: your coverage of Bristol's pregnancy

You actually blew it here. As I pointed out yesterday, some sort of alarm should have sounded when you saw these headlines lined up last week:
COVER STORY: Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed
EXCLUSIVE: Cindy McCain's Half Sister: I'm Voting For Barack Obama
EXCLUSIVE: Tim Gunn: "No Contest" — Michelle has better style than Cindy
Father Of Bristol Palin's Baby: I Don't Want Kids

Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen such an absurd collection of stories in my life in this country and I used to work at the Washington Times.* Because the Washington Times, while it would have gone out of its way to tout "exclusive interviews" with the enemies of its political targets and most certainly would have published any and all incriminating status information from the MySpace pages of its political enemies' teenage daughters' sperminators, has never dissed one of Michelle Obama's outfits.

Admittedly, I haven't conducted any focus groups on the matter; maybe there is a vast untapped demand out there for a left-leaning Daily Mail. More likely, taking into consideration your recent tone-deaf snooty comments about how Us Weekly has "proven" that not all supermarket tabloid readers are "obese" Red State housewives alongside your magazine staffers' public insistence that all "journalism" is tabloid journalism anyhow these days and the understandable identity crisis affecting all celebrity tabloids in the Post-Celebutardrunkdriver Era, Us is still too drunk off the Kool-Aid of its own tremendous financial success to realize that while Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are products of the same socio-cultural-economic moment that gave us Us, you cannot cover them like the rest of the people in Us. As you yourself put it, Paris Hilton never started any wars. Yeah, because even in this country, no one would elect her to the fucking PTA. But they might elect Sarah Palin, and Sarah Palin could actually start a war, and to keep all that from happening you've got to do your best to hide the ample supply of culture war ammunition that is your staff's collective Ivy League diplomas, Obama campaign donations and privileged obnoxious Fashion Week party attending lives. Y'all are not, after all, Matt Taibbi. (Although it would be awesome to get Taibbi to weigh in on the Cindy-Michelle style wars!)

Earlier this year your boss Jann Wenner wrote in your sister publication Rolling Stone that Republican operatives, upon first witnessing the phenomenon that was Barack Obama, were bowled over by the "walking Hope Machine."

Where did they find him? Certainly no Republicans ever expected the party to come up with a black constitutional law professor-cum-senator as conversant in Faulkner as in Friedman as in Jay-Z. Who could galvanize black voters without sullying himself in their pandering machines or resorting to Ebonics, who could praise Reagan even as he systematically went about dismantling the set of assumptions that made him so culturally attractive. Just as certainly, no Democrats expected the Republicans to find an attractive articulate gun-toting mother of five leading a state with an economy sufficiently supportive of America's moribund upper-working class to enable enough of said voters to maintain enough belief in the long-discredited notion that corporate wealth trickles down to elect a Republican governor on looks and charm and Godfearingness alone.**

Where did they find her? Well, they had to go all the way to Alaska, but there she is, and while her life is no more reflective of average American realities than Angelina Jolie's or for that matter John McCain's, that is why they chose her; they're not idiots. John McCain was on to something with that whole "celebrity" thing; this is the world you helped create, Us Weekly.

The only difference is, when you misjudge someone in this game — when you smear indiscriminately or judge too harshly or make Tim Gunn do your dirty work for you — it actually matters because unlike Amy Winehouse or Jamie Lynn Spears they actually have jobs. They are actually entrusted with the power to do shit. And when you dabble in the arena of covering such figures, you can't forget that it's actually not just voyeurism anymore. And when you fuck up there are a thousand livid hockey moms for every Chris Crocker. Many of them are not overweight at all! They might even buy lipstick advertised in Us Weekly. I just don't want Us giving them something to vote against.

*On the Metro section, where I covered the deer overpopulation problem and made $8 an hour for a few months in 1999. It was worth it for the orientation video alone, though they were not exactly receptive to my pitches on such topics as the District's woefully underfunded drug treatment programs.
**Look, I know. The point of that is that sentence is that Alaska is the last outpost of the Economy Of Middle-Income People Who Actually Make Money Doing Real Shit. (As opposed to the manufacture of celebrities and microcelebrities, processing insurance paperwork, etc.)

Its owner is Jann (pronounced Yann, like the first syllable of "Yanni") Wenner Jann Wenner not only gives money to Democrats, he has such a hard-on for some Democrats his other magazines have been known to run images of Democratic candidates with sporting actual hard-ons. (Fig. 1) Also, ever since he came out of the closet after in his mid forties, Jann Wenner has been a "known homosexual."

Us has a known toxic love-hate relationship with probable neoconservative Angelina Jolie. Despite her estrangement from her Republican father*, Angelina Jolie has persistently refused to tow the typical Hollywood liberal line, telling interviewers she hasn't yet decided which candidate will get her vote in the November election and allowing that she is fond of John McCain. Savvy observers will note, however, that Angelina Jolie's conservative leanings, aired most publicly in her February Washington Post guest op-ed piece supporting the McCain-backed troop surge, actually predate the conception of Bristol Palin's unborn child. Surely Us has been "keeping tabs" on Jolie's political sympathies, and quite possibly applied pressure in the case she threatens to break from the socialist liberal Hollywood homodoxy. Do you think it's a coincidence that their harshest attack on Angelina's fitness for motherhood coincided with the theretofore deadliest form of exactly the sort of insurgent attack the troop surge was engineered to combat? ("Yes" is actually the right answer to that question, just to be clear!) (Fig. 2)

Today's headlines speak for themselves.
COVER STORY: Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed
EXCLUSIVE: Cindy McCain's Half Sister: I'm Voting For Barack Obama
EXCLUSIVE: Tim Gunn: "No Contest" — Michelle has better style than Cindy
Father Of Bristol Palin's Baby: I Don't Want Kids

But in fact, Us has been tacitly endorsing Democrat Barack Obama ever since it branded the Illinois senator Just Like Us in February. (No such pronouncement was made of John McCain, whose appearances in the magazine have thus far been limited primarily to his surprise show of support from The Hills star Heidi Montag, which the magazine immediately undermined by quoting Heidi's fiancee Spencer Pratt saying he "didn't think America cared" who Heidi supported.) Meanwhile, when Obama nakedly dodged a question posed by the magazine earlier this year, the magazine managed to "package" it (so to speak) in a way that seemed to paint the Democratic senator in a favorable light.

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, though, the media crit mob is probably right that going all "Kos" on Palin — and seriously, how exactly does a Troopergate cover line sit next to "Halle Berry First Baby Photos!"?? — smacks of hubris and recklessness, if not another outright attempt to distance itself from the heartland and paint itself as the trashy supermarket tabloid of privileged thin Blue Staters who just like killing brain cells. Either way, it's kind of tacky. But um, then, we are the ones who just spent the last hour assessing the policy agenda of Us Weekly.

*As the magazine's glowing coverage of Jenna Bush's nuptials illustrates, 'Us Weekly' DOES have a soft spot for the daughters of well-known conservatives — so long as they write children's books about the importance of safe sex, promise Larry King they are probably not voting for McCain, and take their vows in ceremonies performed by radical socialist Obama-loving African pastors who are willing to talk shit on McCain's moral convictions. Put another way, 'Us' embraces conservatives' daughters who stick closely enough to their script of hardline Bolshevism couched in fuzzy Sesame Street racial tolerance and "Just Like Us!" dresses to adequately perpetuate the subtle policy indoctrination of young impressionable females/theater club males. Bristol Palin, we hope you are listening.

Fig. 1:

Fig. 2:

The story is a little thin: the basis appears to be a source telling Us Weekly that "all the doormen are talking." But it's plausible. It might not be politically correct to say, but Madonna's long displayed a liking for Latin men. And the troubles of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan attract less public attention than they did; and the price of celebrity baby exclusives is beyond the capacity of anybody but OK's Richard Desmond. In that context, Janice Min's team at Us Weekly can hardly be blamed for splashing an affair between two bona fide superstars. Its competitors must be devastated this morning, but not as much as the New York Post, for whom this would have been the most perfect story: a singer who made her name in New York with the city's most hated sports celebrity.

After digging through the refrigerator for sodas, one of the girls pointed to a shiny copy of Us in the rack with Lauren Conrad's silly face staring vaguely at nothing and said, "I really want to buy that but I don't have enough money." Case closed, suckas!

• Ken's path to crappitude began, as so many of them do, with the authorship of a masturbatory memoir (mammoir?) about his travails with being born kind of not totally a man.
• Matt Damon would play him in the movie, natch.
• He and the wife had an infant, which required a nanny.
• He realized he wanted the nanny to make him an infant of their own.
• And texted her to say he wanted to see her "pregnant with pigtails."
• He then began texting Paris Hilton on her famous Sidekick, and she became a loyal source.
• Possibly of blowjobs?
• He determined the Paris Hilton sex tape Jill had come into possession of was too vulgar for the magazine to cover.
• "But why don't you deliver it to the office anyway?"
• Upon watching the film, he deemed it worthy of his publication, though he did not deem Jill worthy of crediting with the scoop, or really anything else she came up with.
• And when she got promoted anyway, Baker responded by promoting his name to a place on the masthead just south of Janice Min's. And hiring his beloved wet nurse — er, nanny — to work as a reporter in his office, at which point his advances began to piss off the paparazzi photographers she was dating.
• So he directed his staff to start sleeping with paparazzi to make up for it.
• Pretty soon everyone in Los Angeles was swapping bodily fluids and Us Weekly passwords. Some reporters decided it was time to leave.
• This displeased Baker, who decided the departure of a reporter for OK! was a matter for the FBI.
• Then it was time to write another book.
• For which he would, naturally, have to throw a party, at hateful Beverly Hills celebquarters Kitson, paid for with $70,000 in free advertising space in US Weekly.
• Then Jill herself left, further inciting Baker's wrath. "I will destroy you," he promised.
• And commenced a year-long sting operation aimed at trapping the reporter into stealing company secrets.
• That culminated in a violent FBI raid on her house.
• And yes, that would be the same FBI that still can't tell us where the anthrax came from.

Last we heard from Ken he was talking to NPR about how great he was and how the mainstream media could stand to learn a thing or two from him and the ways of US Weekly, like maybe what it would be like if the love child of Richard Nixon and Ted Bundy worked at a celebrity tabloid.

*Yes, all this is based on the allegations of Jill Ishkanian, who is now suing Us for $55 million, and there are two sides to every story, and yeah we realize that if any of them are true we are virtually inviting the FBI to raid our house. We're hiding our stash now.

Janice writes,

I get it. I understand why Paris Hilton trumps interest in Bush's eavesdropping, whether or not she's on the cover of Us Weekly. The Paris story may be getting old, but the Bush one feels even older. Cultural critics like to decry our tabloid obsessions, assuming that Americans are too apathetic, dumb, or lazy to follow important political stories as they unfold. But I think the real problem is that George Bush is no longer that guy Americans would rather have a beer with. Like Paris, he is someone we no longer want to think is "just like us." He's become a former political celebrity few want on their red carpet.

"People talk about the tabloidization of society and what it means for the future of society, and people talk about celebrities and their role—but Paris Hilton didn't start any wars," Ms. Min reminded her young charges. "I have memories as a child of watching the Watergate hearings with my mother. And now we live in an era when CNN went for 90 minutes uninterrupted on Anna Nicole Smith's death!"

The Editor of Us Weekly Explains Why She Banned Paris Hilton From Her Pages [Slate]
Earlier: Janice Min: "Paris Hilton Didn't Start Any Wars"