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June 23, 2005

OK! Magazine Comes to America

OK!, a British magazine that pays celebrities for exclusive coverage and allows them to approve text and photos, launches a U.S. edition this summer.

The Wall Street Journal reports that OK! USA has already offered hotel heiress and TV bad girl Paris Hilton $2 million for exclusive rights to coverage of her wedding to a Greek shipping tycoon. A spokesman for the publisher, Northern & Shell PLC, told the Journal that the approach was right, while he refused to confirm the amount of money involved, and said the magazine had also offered Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise payment.

Magazines already pay for celebrity photographs, but the beneficiaries are generally the photographers, not the subjects.

Some editors also suggest that readers want real news, not pre-packaged puff pieces.

There are also some pitfalls for the magazine. The Journal reports that OK!'s British edition paid Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas $1.4 million for pictures of their wedding five years ago. Hello magazine scooped OK!, getting its own unauthorized story and pictures, only to be sued by Zeta-Jones and OK!

Posted by at June 23, 2005 10:33 AM

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