Amy's Robot

Shopping vs. Stalking

You may have noticed a new friend at the news stand this week, a friend who could be the lovechild of Us Weekly and Ladies’ Home Journal. This offering from Bauer publishing is Life & Style Weekly, and just in case you felt there weren’t enough wire service celebrity photos and makeup tips in your life, it will join the company’s In Touch Weekly in your local supermarket aisle.

Just what is Life & Style? Bauer President/COO Hubert Boehle tells us: "In 2002, we launched In Touch Weekly, which continues to expand the weekly celebrity and entertainment market. With Life & Style Weekly, we expect to continue this market expansion by offering young women a new, distinct editorial product."

By “distinct” Boehle means that the company is doing exactly the opposite of what made Us Weekly such an extraordinary success. Us editor Bonnie Fuller recreated what was essentially a supermarket tabloid by combining celebrity news with shopping tips, product endorsements and movie reviews, boiling down every type of women’s magazine into an easily digestible and delicious 20-minute read.

Always the rebel, Boehle has chosen to separate these elements into two magazines: In Touch, exclusively featuring blurry photos and celebrity gossip, and now Life & Style, which documents what stars are buying. Example: In Touch asks “Are Cameron and Justin on the Rocks?”, while Life & Style announces “Cameron was buying sheets on Saturday!”

The bonus of separating your shopping and your stalking is that In Touch and Life & Style both retail for $1.99, considerably cheaper than the all-in-one Us Weekly. But how do you decide which news you need? If you buy both, you may as well have just picked up that copy of Us.

It’s taken the media a great deal of time and effort to create a magazine that so effectively shills products while pretending to offer entertainment, creating general consumer frenzy by linking our celebrity obsessions with the purchase of consumer goods. In this troubled economy, is it really responsible to try and separate them? I say no.

Unless, of course, In Touch and Life & Style turn out to be the exact same magazine.

For more detailed analysis of In Touch, see Fametracker’s guided tour, "What the Hell is In Touch Weekly?"

categories: Media
posted by Emily at 11:26 AM | #