Tabloids' new celebrities could be politicians, instead of Hollywood stars like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Just as mainstream media borrow content from tabloids by writing about Hollywood starlets and the like, tabloids now borrow from media covering the political sphere.

For example, US Weekly put Michelle and Barack Obama on the cover last week while People wrote about Tim Russet.

"The lines between gossip and politics have blurred," ABC News wrote, in light of coverage of politicians like "gay American" Jim McGreevy and New York's prostitute-soliciting former governor, Eliot Spitzer.  

"There are a limited number of celebrities that people really care about, maybe a half dozen, including Britney and Lindsay," said New York Post's Media Ink columnist Keith Kelly. "There is a celebrity fatigue setting in. People are bored of the same people doing the same things, and there is no one new on the horizon."

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, US Weekly's circulation grew by 10% to over 1.9 million between 2006-2007 while People continued to be the most popular celebrity magazine with 3.6 million in circulation, ABC News reported.

As far as content goes, politics is "as much a function of slow gossip as it is a response to a genuine interest in the presidential elections" and including Michelle Obama was "natural" since the readers are young females, according to Bradley Jacobs, US Weekly's senior editor, ABC News reported.

"We're expanding the definition of celebrity to include politics," Jacobs said.

Barack Obama's interview on the US Weekly site in March got around 253 % more page views than "an average story", according to a spokesperson, ABC News reported.

Elizabeth Bird, a University of South Florida anthropologist specializing in pop culture and media said that it's "natural" that people see political candidates as celebrities during elections and that the general public is bored of the "distasteful" celebrity stories.

A fairly optimistic statement, if one considers the continuing success of tabloid-type content...

Source: ABCNews through World News Network