Britney's Atlantic Crossing

By Marc Malkin Mar 12, 2008 11:02 PMTags
Britney spears, Atlantic Monthly Atlantic Monthly

Has the serious, intellectual Atlantic magazine gone tabloid?

Sure looks like it. The latest issue has Britney Spears on the cover!

While the magazine usually sticks to brain-challenging stories about politics, the economy and foreign affairs, Ms. Spears may not necessarily be a complete shocker. The mag covers cultural trends, and say what you will about Spears, but the on-her-road-to-a-comeback pop star is definitely a cultural phenomenon.

The story, “The Britney Show,” written by David Samuels, uses the coverage of Spears to show the rise of paparazzi agency X17.

Among the goodies uncovered by Samuels:

  • Somewhere between 60 and 70 photographers work for X17, and they’re paid anywhere from $800 to $3,000 a week. Paid tipsters include hundreds of parking attendants, club kids and shopgirls.
  • Teams on any given assignment are given code names. When Samuels was shadowing some of the paps, the group of eight Brazilians following Spears was called MBF, using the first initials of the team’s three leaders. They said they logged over 40,000 hours watching Spears.
  • X17 estimates its take from the sale of Spears-related images last year to be $3 million, or 25 percent of the company’s entire gross revenue.
  • Bidding on eBay for a photographer’s Ford Explorer after a bald-headed Spears attacked it with an umbrella hit a high of $40,000 before the shutterbug decided to take it off the market.

And the Atlantic has more. X17 owners Regis and Brandy Navarre will join Samuels, Page Six boss-man Richard Johnson, New York Times writer Virginia Heffernan and tabloid magazine editrix Bonnie Fuller for The Britney Show: The Rise of the 24/7 Celebrity News Cycle, an Atlantic-hosted panel discussion on March 26 at the New York University Graduate School of Journalism.