People Magazine

People magazine acknowledged Monday it altered an image of Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette on its cover, moving them closer together to make room for headlines. The photo also was changed to extend the shrubs behind the pair to "improve readability of the text," the magazine said in a statement. "In retrospect, we would probably reconsider these changes." The magazine said in the statement that it "would never use images to create a situation that did not exist."

Publishing industry observers were startled Wednesday by the announcement that Landon Y. Jones Jr., the top editor of People magazine for more than seven years, is moving to a corporate position within Time Inc. Jones, whose title is managing editor, will be succeeded by Carol Wallace, who has been deputy managing editor for three years and has presided over such annual franchises as the "50 Most Beautiful People" issue. People has a weekly circulation of 3.

Even in Hollywood -- land of breast implants and Botox -- natural counts for something. So says People magazine, which Wednesday said Jennifer Aniston topped its list of best-dressed women of 2006 for her natural fashion sense. Halle Berry, dubbed "The Classic," is No. 2 behind Aniston, and No. 3 was "The Newcomer," Jessica Alba. The magazine's annual best- and worst-dressed issue hits newsstands Friday.

Way, way down, deep in the bowels of a long, strange story in Harper's magazine, I stumbled upon the sentence -- actually the half-sentence -- that sort of, kind of, almost made sense of all the bizarre stuff printed in American magazines in 2006. The story was called "The Blind Man and the Elephant." It was about the Super Bowl, but there were lengthy digressions about the Rolling Stones and Pizza Hut and Wonder Bread and Stevie Wonder and the history of the Moog synthesizer.

Eddie Murphy celebrated New Year's Day by tying the knot with film producer Tracey Edmonds. The pair exchanged vows Tuesday on a private island off Bora Bora in French Polynesia in front of family and friends, their representatives told People magazine. A call to Murphy's publicist, Arnold Robinson, wasn't immediately returned.

A person involved in the negotiations for pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's newborn twins says the rights have fetched $14 million. The person asked not to be named because he was not authorized to release the figure. People magazine scored the photos in a joint deal with the London-based Hello! magazine, and the two will split the bill. People will feature Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon in an issue to hit newsstands Monday, spokeswoman Nancy Valentino said Friday. People bought the U.S. rights while Hello!

Call it a preemptive paparazzi strike. Julia Roberts and her husband, cameraman Danny Moder, have released the first photos of their nearly 3-month-old twins to People magazine, which hit newsstands Friday. "We are releasing these photographs not only to share our happiness, but to ensure the privacy, safety and respect our babies deserve," the couple said in a statement. The photographs show Roberts with her sleepy-eyed twins: Phinnaeus Walter (Finn) and Hazel Patricia.

It doesn't have swanky, security-guarded midtown offices like People. And it doesn't have a big-name editor and publisher like Us Weekly's Bonnie Fuller and Jann Wenner. What newcomer In Touch Weekly does have, though, is an insatiable desire to topple those two celebrity bibles. Launched six months ago by the German giant Bauer Publishing, In Touch is, their editors like to think, the softer alternative.