Three month review for Spring 2011, part three: The naughty to nice continuum

Here are the rankings for The Only Ten Magazines That Matter from meanest to nicest since the beginning of 2010. The headlines are split into negative, positive and neutral and each rag is given a percentage of positive stories.

The Three Wicked Step Sisters
National Enquirer 9.7%
Globe 10.2%
Examiner 15.2%

There was a time when you could throw a blanket over the Three Wicked Step Sister tabloids, their relative meanness percentages were so close to one another. But the low rent Examiner is now the place that publishes anything positive about the Royals, so they are getting a little less mean, while the Enquirer can go weeks without a single nice word about any human being written on their cover. The Flagship is so bad that a best and worst beach bodies story, which should count as neutral, actually had no positive pictures at all, everyone was too fat, scary skinny or over-muscled.

Another example of the dominance of nasty stories in these three magazines is that the winner of Meanest Story of the Week has come from the Three Wicked Step Sisters a total of 38 times, while all the other seven magazines combined have won the award less than ten times combined.

The rest of the AMI kennel
Star 22.0%
Sun 22.8%

The Sun is completely made-up crap, either predictions of the End of the World or terror attacks or goofy stuff from the Weekly World News. The Star is slightly meaner than a magazine that says everyone is going to die on a regular basis.

Think about that for a minute.

Editor's note: The Sun is almost never in the running for Meanest Story of the Week because it is completely made-up crap. I do have some standards.

The meanest of the rest
In Touch 34.4%

Of the five magazines not owned by American Media, Inc. (AMI), In Touch runs the most negative stories on their cover, about two mean stories for every nice one. It's not even close to the Enquirer's track record of ten mean stories for every positive one, but the rest of the pack tend to put a more positive spin on the cover.

The fair and balanced
Weekly Life & Style 49.0%
Us Weekly 49.7%

One mean story matching one nice story, or very close to it.

The Gold Standard
People 60.8%

People tends to be positive at about a 3 to 2 clip. They have won the Meanest Story of the Week award once by asking if Lindsay Lohan was beyond hope.

Pollyanna
OK! 68.4%

The nicest magazine by far, but they make stuff up a lot. I consider any headline that a celebrity is pregnant or getting married a positive story, and OK! runs a lot of such stories that just aren't true. So far, OK! has never won a Meanest Story of the Week competition.