Radio Times theory to Jill Dando murder

The retrial of Barry George rekindles one of the early theories about the murder of Jill dando - that the killing had been sparked by that week’s Radio Times cover.

Slimming down - thanks to digital retouching

A slim-looking Kelly Osbourne fronts today’s Independent Extra feature on digital retouching. This is how she looked on the cover of Fabulous in February:

Other examples include:

• Kate Winslet being ’stretched’ to make her look so tall and thin on a February 2003 GQ cover that she appeared to have size 12 feet (see below). Winslet described the digital manipulation as ‘excessive’. In 2006, the Closer Diets website identified Winslet as having the perfect celebrity body.
• Kate Moss was turned black for the Red Independent issue in September 2006 to highlight the issue of black models on covers.
• Princess Eugenie being touched up and ‘busomed-up’ - ‘Tatlered’ according to the Daily Mirror - this year (see below).

The article discusses the work of Pascal Dangin and the Dove advertising campaigns, which featured photographs by Rankin. The Hayward gallery held an exhibition in April that featured manipulation of images as far back as the 1920s by photographer Alexander Rodchenko.

How Kate Winslet appeared on GQ - one of a series of images at the Indpendent website

Below - how the Mirror reported the treatment of Eugenie’s image

Hippies come out of the underground to buy Oz

The hippies are really coming out of the woodwork as the media celebrates 1968 and all that. Prices for underground magazines such as Oz are going through the roof. A copy of issue 5 from July 1967 sold for £561.30 on Ebay in May last year. A February 1967 first issue sold for £560 in September (one cost just £360 in 2006).

In December in London, a complete run made £3,600 and an almost complete run of International Times, fetched £3,000. That looks cheap compared with what’s on offer on Ebay at the moment - £5,999 starting bid for a set of Oz, £9,999 for a buy it now - and he wants £29.95 for the postage!

Probably better to fly to Bonhams in New York, which is auctioning a complete set on May 16 with a guide price of $3,000 - $6,000 (that’s about £1,500-£3,000, so for £10K you could bag the lot and have a good holiday).

It’s part of a collection put together by fashion designer Peter Golding. It’s worth taking a look at at his Inspirational Times 3D exhibition.

Magazines start phoning and singing

Men’s Health is to use interactive advertising in its July/August issue that allows readers in the US to receive real-time information from advertisers. Readers will be able to take a photo of any advert with a mobile phone to send to a company called SnapTell, which will send a promotional message back to their phone instantly.

The US is seeing growing interest by publishers in interactive advertising. The April 30 issue of People plays a Natasha Bedingfield pop song using a battery and speaker wedged within its pages — though this idea is not new. IBM did it in a French magazine almost 20 years ago.

‘Cleggover’ Piers Morgan - film star in the making

Piers Morgan on journalists from a pithy interview in the Observer by James Robinson:

I’m having so much fun doing this TV lark [a return to editing newspapers is]  unlikely in the near future. It’s in my veins. It’s in my blood. I love Fleet Street, I love journalists. They are a disgusting bunch of venal reptiles and I love wallowing in their pit.

The interview follows Morgan’s GQ profile of Nick Clegg in which he lured the Liberal Democrat leader into bragging about his ‘no more than 30′ sexual conquests, which has resulted in the nickname ‘Cleggover’ in Westminster.

Morgan also discusses his victory in the US celebrity version of The Apprentice:

‘It’s quite interesting how the British press treated my victory. Half the papers completely ignored this global event [sic]. I thought that was a great accolade.’

The former Mirror editor might have had his tongue in his cheek, but journalists have long had a dislike for colleagues who find fame elsewhere.

Yet there is a long history of screen-struck editors, most famously the legendary Arthur Christiansen. He played the role of Daily Express editor in the 1961 film ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’ - and, of course, had done that job for real for 25 years. A Topic magazine report at the time revealed Lord Beaverbrook demanded a private showing in his Fleet Street office. The 82-year-old Express proprietor - in whose ‘glasshouse’ or ‘Black Lubianka’ the film had been shot, is reported to have said: ‘Wonderful. If you had taken up acting instead of editing, you would be another Cary Grant by now.’

Perhaps that’s what Morgan is really after.

A tale of being Tatlered à la Princess Eugenie

Pictures of Princess Eugenie in the Tatler and Telegraph last week again raised the issue of digital retouching, with the poor 17-year-old undergoing the virtual equivalent of Pamela Anderson-esque cosmetic surgery. The Mirror took the story on with reporter Kate Jackson stepping under the virtual knife for her makeover. ‘I loved the inflated pneumatic cleavage and dainty nose,’ beamed the reporter/victim.

Eggars and McSweeney’s

Dazed and Confused has a profile of McSweeney’s, the publishing house set up by former Esquire US editor Dave Eggars. Digital edition subscribers can see it here, otherwise, it’s £3.85 in the shops. Madonna is on the cover and ‘reinvention’ is the issue’s theme.

Hello!’s ‘nasty’ rivals

Eduardo Sanchez Perez, son of the founder of Hola! who is in London to shake up celebrity weekly Hello!,  takes a dig at the opposition in a Media Week interview: ‘Most of the other titles are showing content that we would not consider good enough for Hello!’  with some rivals ‘not upmarket or glamorous, and a bit nasty’.

Star’s ‘check-book’ journalism

The editor of US celebrity glossy magazine Star wants to take the celebrity glossy back to its old dirt-digging days as a supermarket tabloid by paying sources for information from readers. Although the practice is frowned on, says the New York Post’s Keith Kelly, editor-in-chief Candace Trunzo says: ‘I make no qualms about it … I think all the celebrity magazines do it.’

The latest issue lists a free phone number and e-mail address for scoops - with $100 or moare paid for information.

The Devil wears her heart on her sleeve

The Devil Wears Prada portrayed women fashion magazine editors as very strange people. So seeing one come across as human can be a tad surprising. Alexandra Shulman - the UK peer of US Vogue’s Anna Wintour, on whom The Devil was supposed to be based - reveals a quandry at the heart of her life in an Independent interview:

‘I think we have a very unhealthy relationship with how people really look and I have to marry my personal feelings about it, which is that people should relax a bit and concentrate a bit more on other aspects of themselves, with the fact that I edit Vogue, which is a magazine which is all about creating that idealised image for people.’

And perhaps she does stay up at night worrying about skinny models and black models.

Last year, Naomi Campbell hit out at British Vogue for not putting her on the cover. In fact, Campbell has appeared on the front of Vogue at least six times. Shulman dismisses the comments as ‘a PR thing’ – ’she was just trying to get publicity for the event she was doing’.

But she adds: ‘What I think is an absolutely valid criticism is there aren’t enough black people in all areas of successful life.’

‘I have to be realistic about these things. If you look at the black population in this country and you look at the amount of black women featured in the magazine throughout, we’re absolutely on a par with the whole population, but what we’re not doing is overcompensating.

‘I happen to think she [Naomi] really likes being one of the few really successful black models, because it gives her a huge advantage and she’s had an incredibly long career.’

‘Still in Vogue after all these years‘ by Ciar Byrne in the Independent.