As Celebrity Magazine Circulations Globally Show Great Strength It’s Not Brain Surgery To Diagnose Why Paparazzi Problems Worsen

Is there any connection between those celebrity circulations going up and the car chases on Los Angeles freeways of stars, or for that matter pursuing British royalty on dirt roads in Africa? You bet there is. Big money is at stake.

A truly exclusive picture of a celebrity, especially if he/she is seen to be doing something wrong (holding hands with someone else’s spouse, or getting snapped nude as recently happened with actor Jude Law in France) can be worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars if marketed correctly around the world.

Even the so-called B pictures of a star’s every day life can sell for hundreds per magazine and by the time global sales are taken into account one can see why being a successful paparazzo can be a very lucrative business.

And while celebrities often favor publicity, there are limits, even for them. How bad can things get? Just take your minds back to Princess Diana and how she was continually hunted by the paparazzi – it’s hard to forget the scenes at airports when they were truly amassed in her face, or along a public street. And nobody should forget that on the fateful night of her death that her driver was going too fast partly because the car was being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles behind her, to the side of her and some reports say even in front.

ftm background

Christina Aguilera Says She Wants to Sing the Blues. Which Is Just As Well After Opening Her Mouth Cost Her a Lucrative Product Licensing Agreement For Her Own Clothing Label
There are times when being the business manager for a pop music star just isn’t worth the effort. After months of license negotiations, Christina Aguilera clothes and accessories were set to hit stores in the summer. Then the diva mouthed off at the Academy Awards, “I just think it is so tacky (for celebrities to have their own clothing lines). I have always thought it one of those things that just make people look like they don’t know what to do any more.”

Vanity Fair Claims A Big Exclusive Revealing the True Identity of “Deep Throat”; That Is NOT Where the Kudos Should Go – They Belong to The Washington Post For Protecting Their Source These Long 30 Years
Sometimes journalism can be very cruel to itself. The Washington Post honored its agreement with W. Mark Felt that it would not name his as “Deep Throat” – the secret source who confirmed many of the details in the Post’s Watergate coverage that eventually ended with the resignation in disgrace of Richard Nixon as President of the United States in 1974. Yet a phone call from a lawyer representing Deep Throat’s family two years ago to Vanity Fair asking if they would buy the story eventually gave the magazine its “exclusive.”

The Newsweek Debacle: Whatever Happened to the Rule That Before Something Got Printed It Had Two Reliable Named Sources?
Ever since the global revulsion to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq the media has been aware that particularly in the Moslem world they take their religion and customs very seriously, and when American wrongdoing towards Moslems is uncovered it’s going to cause very serious consequences. That doesn’t mean that such events should not be reported, but it does mean extra care needs to be taken to ensure such reporting is correct.

Wall Street Says That Newspaper Industry Valuations Are Underperforming the Market. But Don’t Buy, It Says They’re Going Down Even More
Even though newspaper industry shares have underperformed the US markets by some 10%, looking like a buy bargain, Merrill Lynch has issued a report that says the shares basically have only one direction to travel and that’s down.

When we think of Fellini’s film masterpiece La Dolce Vita many of us remember the classic scene of Anita Ekberg in her evening gown frolicking in Rome’s Trevi Fountain. But that film is even more notable because it brought us a news photographer character named Paparazzo, and with the plural being paparazzi, a new term was introduced into media lore.

Things are getting so bad in Los Angeles now that the District Attorney is conducting an investigation into paparazzi tactics, particularly to see if they are trying to get their targets into stressful situations on purpose so they can snap those types of pictures that are becoming ever more popular.

Actress Scarlett Johansson says her Mercedes was chased down a freeway on her way with friends to Disneyland. She paid to enter the Disneyland parking lot, and, still chased and trying to get away, she side-swiped a car driven by a woman who had two children in her car. Thankfully, no one was hurt. She now says she is leaving LA until the paparazzi are cleaned up.

Actress Reese Witherspoon said she was chased from her gym to her home by paparazzi, a celebrity photographer was arrested on suspicion of smashing purposely into actress Lindsay Lohan's car near a shopping mall, actor Brad Pitt says he hires four doubles to keep the Paparazzi guessing, actress Alicia Silverstone said she was chased through Los Angeles Airport and ended up hiding in a box, and at Britney Spears’ baby shower someone apparently “snapped” back with a paparazzi suffering a pellet-gun wound to the thigh.

On this side of the Atlantic, actor Jude Law was caught in the all-together outside his mother’s house in France, and the pictures are said to be worth even more since they show his manhood in the condition, as one wag put it, of having just come out of very very cold water!

British royalty are no paparazzi fans. Apart from everything that happened to Diana, her son, Prince Harry, has had more than one run-in outside nightclubs, and there were stories earlier this year of he and his South African girlfriend being chased down an African dirt road in what could have been a very dangerous situation.

His father, Prince Charles, also angry that his other son, Prince William, and his girl friend were also being hounded by Paparazzi was heard to mutter during an official photo shoot, “Bloody people.”

Not that such paparazzi antics are new. When this writer was the UPI Nordic chief in the 1970s he got a phone call one day in the Helsinki office from a photographer from the PM newspaper who said he had managed to snap nude photos of Christina Onassis in her hotel suite – she often stopped over in Helsinki on the way to see then fiancé, later third husband, Sergei Kauzov in Moscow -- and would UPI be interested in exclusive syndication? It took less than a second to say no, and then, because I thought such offers could damage the reputation of the newspaper’s parent company I gave their senior executives a heads-up on what was being offered under their name.

Turned out the photographer was off-duty when he took the pictures, he had climbed a tree to a position where he could shoot over the balcony into the hotel suite’s bedroom and he snapped Christina, who presumed she had some privacy, walking around nude. Never found out what happened to the photographer, but those pictures never saw the light of day, very possibly they got bought just to be killed.

Because of such antics privacy laws have been passed in many European countries on what is and is not fair game, giving a real meaning to privacy as opposed to public occasions. And royalty are quick to take advantage – Princess Caroline of Monaco has on at least two occasions sued and won in cases where she said her privacy had been invaded.

So why all this extra fuss now? According to the latest magazine circulation figures on both sides of the Atlantic, it is the celebrity magazine in particular that is experiencing the big circulation increases.

US Weekly, which earlier this year paid about $500,000 for US exclusivity of Brad Pitt and Angelina Joli together on an African Beach, saw it total circulation climb 24% to 1.67 million. The Star saw its circulation jump 21% to 1.42 million. The leading celebrity magazine, People, saw a modest 1.3% increase, but its 3.8 million circulation still dwarfs the others.

That compares to newsweeklies like Newsweek that saw its newsstand sales crash 14% to 126,163, but overall paid circulation increased by 1.8% to 3,2 million. That brings into question how much discounted subscriptions came into play following Newsweek’s “informed sources” editorial gaffe earlier in the year for which it had to apologize. Time saw total circulation stay flat at 4.05 million, but newsstand sales dropped by 3.4% to just 157,217 copies.

In the much small UK market Closer saw circulation rise 7.1% to 540,000, OK! grew 0.6% to 532,843, and Hello! rose 2.6% to 392,,481.

The down-market Ok! is investing some $100 million over six years in launching a US edition. It’s first US issue this month had a 1.3 million print run.

The magazine is well known for paying celebrities big money directly for stories or rights to events – it allegedly is paying Michael Jackson $2 million for the first interview and photos after his recent California trial, and it paid Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones $1 million for exclusive rights to their 2000 marriage ceremony.

The magazine calls it “relationship journalism” Most American editors call it “checkbook journalism”, which is officially frowned upon but in reality it is really nothing new in American celebrity journalism – it just is not as blatant, nor the numbers as high as the British import brings to the table

And how can the paparazzi be stopped from getting onto incidents where people get physically hurt? Editors of several prominent US celebrity magazines say they won’t buy pictures in which the paparazzi are part of the story in how the pictures got taken in the first place, and that alone should have a chilling effect upon some of the current LA outrages.

But apart from that there is not much else that can be done, unless, of course, you and I stop reading those celebrity magazines and then the need for most paparazzi will simply disappear.

OK! Lowers Price, Goes Pink, Does Better In US - May 29, 2006

Amazing what a drop in price of a weekly entertainment magazine from $3.29 to $1.99 can do. Also get rid of the stark red coloring and make it a softer pink on the cover and suddenly circulation is up where it was originally planned.

When Britain’s OK! magazine launched in the US last August it was selling just 130,000 copies out of a print run of more than 1 million. Things had to change, and they have.

The page size was reduced so it was a better fit in US magazine racks, a soft pink instead of the hard red was used for the logo and cover, and the cover price was reduced to $1.99 – more like its main competition.

Result: Circulation from January to March said to be around 450,000 copies and January-June is expected to be 500,000. Still a far cry from People magazine’s 3.7 million, but at least it has a foothold.

Lesson learned: Every market is different. What might work in the UK may not necessarily travel to the US. But willingness to be flexible to change the magazine to the nuances of the individual market can do wonders.

California Passes Paparazzi and Anti-Phishing Laws – October 4, 2005

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, himself the victim of paparazzi when his day job was being one of the world’s most popular actors, has signed into law legislation permitting large civil penalties against paparazzi who overstep the assault line in capturing their celebrity pictures.

The law, effective January 1, 2006, says paparazzi can be held liable for punitive damages, can be forced to give up income for pictures taken under assaults, and victims can seek up to three times the amount of actual damages suffered.

The thinking behind the bill is that paparazzi do what they do to earn a lot of money. If the law can take all that money away then perhaps the assaults will stop. And since celebrities have the money to file civil suits, it might just work! On the other hand, it might just drive up the cost of celebrity pictures, as civil court judgments become just another cost of doing business.

Schwarzenegger has also signed into law the first US bill that permits victims to recover the higher of actual damages or $500,000 from phishing schemes – giving personal information via e-mail to an entity that falsely says it is a representative of a legitimate business.

OK! US Launch at Around 350,000 Copies Daily - September 8, 2005

Although it’s print run is around 1.3 million, OK! sales In the US are settling at around 350,000 copies weekly in spite of, or because of, a major promotional campaign.

And publisher Gaby Fireman is already gone, replaced by Melanie Danks, ad controller at Express Newspapers in London that is part of the same group that publishes OK!

Naming a new publisher with major advertising experience after just a month’s publication indicates management’s priority with the new US edition now that the launch has occurred.