Time Considers Another Celebrity Tabloid
By DAVID CARR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A trip through supermarket checkout lines demonstrates that there are more flavors of celebrity gossip than chewing gum, but Time Inc. is still interested in the notion of adding one more product to the mix.

Carol Wallace, the former managing editor of People magazine, is working on a prototype of a celebrity-infested, photo-driven weekly magazine. Call it Son of Picture Week, a photo weekly that Time Inc., a division of AOL Time Warner, abandoned in 1986 after spending $30 million.

"This is just sort of preliminary research," said Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc., adding it was just one of "half a dozen" new magazine ideas being explored.

Time Inc. already publishes People, the behemoth of celebrity newsstand magazines (albeit with a generous helping of real-people coverage).

But with People costing $3.29 a copy on the newsstand and employing an editorial staff in the hundreds, Time Inc. executives think there may be room for a lower-priced, less journalistically costly project that is more willing to display a tabloid sensibility.

Last month, Bauer Publishing USA introduced a magazine that relies on celebrity photographs and costs just $1.99; introductory offers slashed that price to $1. And Wenner Media has posted significant newsstand gains since it hired Bonnie Fuller as editor earlier this year.

Mr. Pearlstine said Time Inc. had learned new approaches to making low-cost magazines from IPC Media, the British magazine company that Time Inc. bought last year. IPC publishes Now, which is a successful celebrity weekly in Britain.

Still, Mr. Pearlstine said, "unless there is a significant change in the economics, it's doubtful we would launch anything like this in 2003." But the company, which has a tradition of asking retiring editors to develop prototypes, was serious enough to have Ms. Wallace come up with four mock-ups in consecutive weeks.

Ms. Wallace, who retired from People after a successful five-year tenure, has no interest in running the magazine, according to Mr. Pearlstine. "We just thought this would be a good use of Carol's time while she was here, he said."

James W. Seymore Jr., who was managing editor of Entertainment Weekly until August, is among the names that have been bandied about as editor of the so-far nameless project.

Splitting the difference
By Clare Dyer The Guardian

He was a property tycoon in his 30s, worth at least £25m and possibly as much as £150m. She was a 26-year-old former model with two GCSEs and a £1m trust fund set up by her father.

With hindsight, their marriage never had much of a chance. Both were shocked to discover, a brief two months after they started seeing each other, that she was pregnant. She said she would have an abortion unless he married her. He didn't want her to get rid of the baby, but didn't feel ready for commitment. They went on a five-week, £30,000 holiday and agreed they would let the baby be born but get to know each other better before deciding whether to tie the knot.

That was before her parents were told of the coming event. Adamant that they weren't having their grandchild born out of wedlock, they pressured him to marry their daughter. Her mother put it starkly: agree to marry her or I will take her for an abortion.

Dad, a forceful character, held out a carrot to the reluctant bridegroom. Why not draw up a prenuptial agreement? Then if the marriage didn't work out, at least his future son-in-law's fortune wouldn't be at risk. All his daughter would get would be a home for herself and the child - to revert back to her ex-husband when the youngster was grown up - and a lump sum of £100,000 plus 10% per annum for each year that the marriage lasted.

The sumptuous wedding, the day after the agreement was signed, cost more than £82,000, and that didn't include the flowers. Ten months later, the wife consulted solicitors about a divorce. She was never to move into the house bought as a joint home.

Now, in a landmark case on pre-nuptial contracts, the high court has largely upheld the agreement signed by the Ks, the ill-starred north London pair identified (as couples in divorce cash battles are) only by the initial letter of their surname. Read more