Surprisingly nice headline of the week: Travolta's battle to save tragic "Taxi" star.

Publication: National Enquirer
Date: 30 May 2011

Fresh trash on Thursdays! Welcome to 2011 tabloid gossip hell, Jeff Conaway!

For those of you visiting the blog for the first time, know that AMI, the company that owns the National Enquirer and four other gossip rags, hates Scientology with every fiber of their being, hating John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Tom Cruise almost equally. So this week, it comes as a surprise that they put up a positive story about Travolta doing his best to help out his Grease co-star Jeff Conaway, whose problems with booze and pain killers have been well documented on all those miserable celebrity rehab shows.

I have no love for Scientology either, but anyone willing to reach out to help a pal from back in the day is doing the right thing in my book.

Surprisingly nice headline of the week: Pray for Annette Funicello!

Publication: National Examiner
Date: 4 April 2011

The low rent Examiner is experimenting with a new concept, the idea of being sympathetic to the people it plasters all over its cover stories. The Globe had her on the cover last week saying she narrowly escaped death in a fire. This week, the low rent Examiner covers the same story, but instead goes for a more believable pathos, saying the fire was a terrible financial hardship.

Both stories may be a little overblown. Getting rescued from a fire is not always a dramatic movie scene, and there is such a thing as homeowner's insurance. Still, when I count the positive and negative headlines in the quarterly review, I'd put the Globe story on the negative side and the low rent Examiner story on the positive side.

Nice work guys! Baby steps.

Surprisingly nice headline of the week:All about the girl who would be queen

Publication: National Examiner
Date: 4 April 2011

Fresh trash on Thursdays! There's been an editorial shift over at the low rent Examiner. While the Globe is convinced people standing in American supermarket checkout lines want to hear everything they can that's bad about the marriage of Wills'N'Kate, the low rent Examiner has decided to go with generally nice stories about the young royals. Here are the sub-headlines that would not look out of place on the cover of OK!, the nicest of the rags.

• Mom played matchmaker
• What you don't know about Kate
• secret "princess classes"

We are still about a week away from the next three month review, but when it comes to the horse race for what gossip rag is the meanest, the low rent Examiner is falling way behind the other Wicked Step Sisters, the Globe and Enquirer.