US Magazine Paying the Price for Palin Slander

There was a lot of noise in the blogosphere in the last day over the slanderous cover that US Magazine ran on Sarah Palin. The "Babies, Lies and Scandal" title implied wrongdoing that wasn't even detailed in the article. It was a cheap shot at Palin and the Republicans, aimed at the millions of women who subscribe along with millions of others who would see only the cover on grocery store checkstands. The blowback against US has been huge.

Megyn Kelly of Fox News totally destroyed their Executive Editor on TV the other day (who insisted the article was "balanced"), and word is now that thousands of subscribers are canceling their subscriptions:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Three celebrity weeklies — OK!, People and Us Weekly — featured Sarah Palin on their cover, but one of those magazines is reportedly losing subscribers because of it.

Us Weekly, which unlike People and OK!, chose a rather caustic cover line (“Babies, Lies and Scandal”) is said to have lost thousands of subscribers in just the first 24 hours following the printing of the issue.

“I’m hearing it’s 5,000, maybe more,” says one well-placed source in the industry. Another source claimed that as many as 10,000 readers have already cancelled their subscriptions. A spokesperson for Wenner Media, which publishes Us, says “it is completely false that we are losing 10,000 subscribers.” As for the 5,000 estimate, the spokesperson only said “that is false, too,” but wouldn’t comment further.

Five thousand might not seem like a large number at first glance, but it’s significant in the context of Us’s printing schedule. The magazine goes to press Monday night, which means subscribers don’t receive their issues until Friday or Saturday. In other words, the cancellations are coming from subscribers who, in many cases, haven’t even gotten their hands on the actual issue.

“When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart," says one magazine editor. “They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal. They don’t need to read the magazine when there’s so much press around it to know to be upset.”

Upset might be an understatement: One Us advertiser has admitted that they’ve received calls from angry former subscribers threatening to boycott their products. “(Us publisher) Jann Wenner supports Obama, Wenner media decided to follow the buzz around Palin before her speech, and now subscribers feel like a vote has been cast on their behalf," says another magazine editor. “It’s going to be tough to bounce back from this one. Especially if the advertisers get involved. If they get nervous, that can hurt all of us.”

The other day I heard one TV talking head referring to US Magazine as a "news" magazine. I'm sure Time and Newsweek would love being lumped in with those losers.

Let this be a warning to Oprah who also has a huge female audience and will make a serious mistake if she ignores Palin and assumes that everybody who watches shares her politics.