As magazines around the country see a decline in sales, gossip rags are not immune. In an article published in the Huffington Post, Mark Pasetsky writes that the main problem with gossip magazines are that they are too textually based. Text outweighs photos, turning readers away. He finds the three main problems with celebrity gossip magazines to be: Too many staffers doing one job, ignoring the success of celebrity blogs, and too much text.
I tend to agree with what Pasetsky writes. Celebrity blogs are huge. Perezhilton.com is hugely successful, gaining major advertisers who occasionally buy out the entire page. The New York Times recently wrote an article about a new site, Wonderwall.com, with a slightly nicer tone than Perez. Being an avid reader of Perez, I of course had to check out Wonderwall.com. I like it. It reads horizontally instead of vertically which is nice, in case you are an incompetent scroller like I am. The stories are good (I think Perez might be updated more) but overall, I missed Perez’ rude analysis of celebrities. However, that might have to do more with my personality than the blogs themselves.
Either way, tabloids need to figure out how to convert the success of celebrity blogs into print and make money off of them.
