See how magazines paid tribute to Prince
When Prince died on April 21, the world lost one of the greatest pop stars ever. The news made the front page of nearly every daily newspaper. For the gossip magazines, it was even sadder. The death occurred on Thursday, the day their publications hit newsstands. They’d have to wait a week to tell the story. Let’s see how they did.
Life & Style
Prince might have been one of the most talented figures to hit the pop culture scene in the last 50 years, but to the editors at Bauer’s Life & Style he was no Ben Affleck. The weekly, which tracks Hollywood’s hottest trends, gave most of the cover of this week’s issue to Affleck, who has apparently knocked up his wife again and called off the divorce. The heart-warming tale is spread across two pages — and the story couldn’t be more boring if Affleck wrote it. You would think that with six days to edit six paragraphs, they’d make sure some “facts” didn’t conflict. One fan who attended Prince’s April 16 dance party is quoted as saying, “He seemed completely healthy.” Another partygoer told the mag, “He needed help getting up on the stage” and had a doctor by his side. Save your $3.49 for a couple of song downloads.
InTouch
InTouch, a stable-mate of L&S at Bauer, thought it would stand out from the competition on the newsstand not through better reporting or more captivating photos, but by taking a bong hit of crazy and declaring on its cover and across the story’s opening spread that Prince was murdered. Now don’t run out and buy this rag hoping for honest to goodness facts. The claim is based on an unidentified “veteran private investigator” who feels that if Prince’s doctor over-prescribed a range of addictive medications then, in his opinion, it was murder. Nice work, Clouseau.
Us Weekly
Wenner Media’s Us Weekly publishes a strong, well-written story that stuffs plenty of inside info (a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince kept a $20-per-infraction swear jar in his Paisley Park home), good reporting (he was bullied plenty while playing on his high school basketball team) and behind-the-scenes glimpses (he played for two hours, until 2 a.m. at a March concert for 200 VIPs). Writer Chuck Arnold does a superb job pulling from a multitude of sources, including an unpublished interview with Rolling Stone, also owned by Wenner. There are 29 photos spread across the seven-page feature. The magazine also has the best cover photo of any of its rivals.
People
Folks who buy People this week will get a classy cover shot of Prince and a nine-page spread that wraps its arms around the artist’s life and greatest accomplishments. It reports on his songs, his women, his antics and his tragic end. It’s the most encompassing story among the four major gossip magazines. But something’s missing. Reading Alynda Wheat’s story about Prince’s genius is like having your mom and dad read Rick and Ilsa’s lines from “Casablanca.” The words will be familiar, you’ll think about famous scenes from the film — but it won’t be the same. For example, Wheat writes: “A master of two dozen instruments, he gave kinetic live shows with multiple encores, then jammed for hours more at after-parties.” Prince’s soul is somewhere in those words, but it is hard to find.
New York
A cover story by Andrew Sullivan in New York serves as Exhibit A for the feckless hand-wringing that continues to mire the Democratic establishment’s response to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Sullivan quotes Plato’s “Republic” as he frets that responsible “elites” are losing control of the country to an unchecked, internet-fueled mob. OK, fair enough. But Sullivan’s call to action — namely, that Democrats give “passionate support” to GOP insiders looking to thwart Trump through convention rules, and that Clinton “address more directly the anxieties of the white working class” — is notably brief, odd and lacking in conviction, as Yeats might say, in the wake of all that classical learning.
New Yorker
As if to exemplify the Democratic dithering with further alacrity, the New Yorker spills its Trump-related ink on a fairly frivolous piece about Melania Trump, gleefully riffing on the irony that she’s an immigrant. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Toobin pens a somewhat puffy profile of Preet Bharara, who denies that he’s interested in replacing his nemesis Andrew Guomo as governor of New York. “I was not born to run,” Bharara insists, in a distinct nod to New Jersey’s own favorite Boss. Elsewhere, check out the profiles of Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif, as well as a piece on prospectors in Poland who have been searching for buried Nazi treasure. While they may turn up nothing, “There are still many holes here waiting to be dug,” says one.