Backlash!

Us Magazine is paying the price for it's Palin cover.

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.

This is my favorite part (money phrase in bold)

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.”

Olbermann was waving this issue around on PMSNBC. Apparently people were so PO'ed that they were cancelling subscriptions before the magazine got to them.

Myself, I lost my mind. The St. Pete Times called me Thursday asking if I wanted home delivery. I told him I would sooner eat the entrails of a dead rhino before I paid money for his paper. I wrote an email to my local NBC affiliate explaining to them why mittens and thermal underwear will be worn in Hell before I watched news on that station.

And I had to confess to my pastor that I was in love with a married woman from Alaska.