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All Eyes On Britney (on the Cover of The Atlantic)
Amy Novak

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The circus was in town today, and we aren’t talking about the one put on by the fabulous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The circus we are referring to has just as many juggling clowns and sparklers though. We mean the celebrity news circus.

At a luncheon hosted by The Atlantic and held at the NYU Graduate School of Journalism, it was hard to sort through the acrobatics to determine just what this shindig was all about. The event was called The Britney Show: The Rise of the 24/7 Celebrity News Cycle and as far as we could tell, it was meant to be a panel discussion dissecting the rise of the paparazzi culture and society’s insatiable appetite for gossip. But the focus was a little “Britney” (aka all over the place) for our taste. Justin B. Smith, president of Atlantic Consumer Media spoke first explaining why they chose to run a feature and cover on Britney Spears, most likely to their readers’ chagrin. “People think we made this decision to increase sales, but the reality is that our readers might not be happy with this choice. We simply feel that the new paparazzi and Britney are of cultural relevance and The Atlantic is known for covering culture.”

We were smaching into a tiny room (we don’t like it when our chair is touching the person’s next to us) but at least we got a seat and didn’t have to watch from closed-circuit TV in the lounge. Nonetheless, the panel was amazing and featured some of publishing’s icons including Bonnie Fuller, editorial director of American Media (best known for her revival of US Weekly when she was e-i-c of the mag), Richard Johnson, editor of The New York Posts’s Page Six, and Regis and Brandy Navarre of the massive X17 paparazzi agency. Moderating was Atlantic contributor (and Britney feature writer) David Samuels who had the daunting task of keeping the discussion focused on celebrity news as a business/cultural necessity and not on Britney’s next big public mistake or Paris’ new boyfriend.

Being that the panel was so well-known, they were being filmed by multiple crews and photographers with much bigger cameras than ours. In fact things were so chaotic, we felt a bit like paparazzi ourselves.

From Left: Regis Navarre, founder X17 Paparazzi Agency
Viginia Heffernan, columnist, New York Times Magazine, online video expert
Richard Johnson, editor, The New York Posts's Page Six
Brandy Navarre, editor, X17online.com
David Samuels, contributing writer, The Atlantic
Bonnie Fuller, editorial Director, American Media

April's Cover of The Atlantic

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