mediavillage.com
Media Industry Newsletter has the story: The results are in for the best-selling newsstand covers of 2006, with Barack Obama spelling high sales for news weeklies. Both Time and Newsweek featured cover shots of the Democratic candidate on their best-selling issues, with Time's "extreme close-up" cover proving a hit and Newsweek striking gold with an arms-crossed Obama and smiling Hillary Clinton standing side by side. No surprise, October's Suri Cruise photo extravaganza sold the most copies for Vanity Fair, though her parents' selling power plummeted by December, when the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes "Dream Wedding" cover resulted in the year's worst seller for Us Weekly.
Obama's newsstand attraction is no surprise - political candidates can sink or float a cover, depending on the wave of public opinion. Timing is everything, as Howard Dean demonstrated on the February 2004 cover of Rolling Stone (the issue, which came out right as the once-lauded Democrat was dropping points at the Iowa caucus, was a major flop). Of course, a poorly-designed or unfortunate cover pic can also have the opposite effect - after the New York Times Magazine's highly unflattering cover photo of former Virginia Governor Mark Warner ran in March of 2006 (maybe the editorial board thought the "creepy used car salesman" look was in?), the cover prompted speculation from political analysts that Warner's presidential aspirations could be permanently damaged. The fallout even prompted an apology from the mag, which admitted that it had "rendered colors incorrectly for [the former Governor's] jacket, shirt and tie." So far, Obama hasn't fallen into the "photo distortion" trap (a phenomenon that Time in particular should be sensitive to, given its questionable past missteps with covers). Though, should a bad Obama pic accidentally slip through the cracks, there's always this one to fall back on.
