Even in a recession, gossip sells

The death of Michael Jackson means big business for America's magazines — its gossip magazines — because, despite the recession, gossip still sells. In fact, in the past 12 months in the US, gossip magazines have lost fewer advertising pages than business or news magazines. The biggest, People, is now selling more copies than it did in 2001. Fully 43 million Americans, about two-thirds of them women, read a copy of the magazine each week.

For the next seven days, Michael Jackson will replace the Gosselins. Who? Well, for the last seven weeks, the front cover of Us Weekly magazine has featured stories about Jon and Kate Gosselin, who have eight children, including sextuplets. They are now celebrities, and everything they do is news.

Gossip magazines have to fight websites such as omg! and bloggers like Perez Hilton, as well as Twitter, mobile-phone alerts and gossipy television shows. All of these provide much more timely information about the lives of the beautiful than do magazines. However, People has just launched an iPhone application, and its website receives 13 million visitors a month. People, it seems, cannot get enough gossip.