Dylan Stableford of The Wrap’s Media Alley blog looked around on Twitter to find out which national magazines had the most Twitter followers. After analyzing his findings, Stableford was surprised to find that “the biggest magazines in terms of print circulation have a shockingly puny presence on Twitter.” For example, Good Housekeeping (4.4 million circulation, 4,683 followers) didn’t break the Top 25. Neither did AARP The Magazine (24 million circ., 358 followers), which, really, should shock nobody. Meanwhile, Time (3.4 million circ., 2.2 million followers) and the embattled Newsweek (1.9 million circ., 1.2 million followers) both placed in the top ten.

The Economist magazine’s June 19 issue features a dramatic “Obama v BP” cover. Standing at the coast, President Barack Obama is alone, head down, with the oil rig in the background. But it turns out, Obama wasn’t actually alone. Now, The Economist is getting criticism for a digitally altered cover.

It’s not every day one expects to read the Economist endorsing Sarah Palin on….well anything. But that is just what they have done in a recent blog post regarding Palin’s thoughts on the criminalization of marijuana.

The world of traditional media has overturned in the past decade – and few have ridden the crest of this wave more savvily than Michael Kinsley. As a pundit on CNN’s “Crossfire,” editing Slate, experimenting with the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and now at The Atlantic, Kinsley’s philosophy has been an open desire to speak truth to power, and to bend the boundaries of where and how the media engages with its audience. Philip Bump examines the arc of Kinsley’s career, and just how ahead of the curve that arc has been.

Miracle of the ages. Two days after the historic health care bill passed — alternately known in some circles as Armageddon — initial polls are showing that health care approval ratings have gone up (also President Obama‘s). A USA Today/Gallup Poll finds that “49%-40% of those surveyed say it was ‘a good thing’ rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill.” This is in contrast to last week when there was “a plurality against it.” Why the difference? (Ahem, cablers.)

Malls are retail newspapers. They are professionally curated assemblages of commercialism, vulnerable to simple tools that get the job done more specifically and rapidly. Nowadays, it’s far easier and more personalized to fulfill a shopping list online, putting together your own virtual mall from which you buy only what you’re interested in, skipping over the online equivalents of Cinnabon and the sunglasses kiosk. Not to mention parking.

Today, Ad Age has an in-depth infographic detailing which websites command the highest ad rates today, as impressions skyrocket, threatening the worth of CPMs — a shaky metric from the start. In his piece, Michael Learmonth writes, “And while the recession has put another hit on CPMs … across the web, some sites can still pimp fat ad rates either by virtue of their reach, specialized audience or unique environment.” But still, Kim is Queen.

The media loves one-year anniversaries, hundred-day anniversaries — any excuse to zoom in on the thing they’ve been covering all along. This week’s one-year anniversary of the financial crisis — a gold mine for business magazines! Or a call for gold spray paint, if you’re BusinessWeek.

Summertime and the living is easy. Unless you are the Editor in Chief of a weekly news magazine. The summer news slump that’s so great for the vacation plans of tv anchors and reporters, presents a challenge of what to put on the cover – particularly when there’s no clear cover story that has availed itself.

In October, 1991, James Fallows wrote a hilarious takedown of the Economist that ran in the Washington Post’s Outlook Section. The essay attempted to explain why perfectly intelligent people, like Harvard’s Robert Reich (who at the time was in the middle of a squabble with Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson), would say things like: “I, for one, [...]

We can’t blame The Economist for replaying 100-day coverage because, let’s face it, the American news media was was a little premature and extravagant. The Economist’s ‘Crunch time’ cover is playful, and handsome to boot. And we especially love the baby blue, because nothing says ‘crunch time’ like baby blue.

Historians generally agree that Watergate was a great moment for the press – and for the Washington Post, which published the scoops of that would eventually take down a president. But the July 17th issue of the Economist points to a more unorthodox take: That the Washington Post was selfish, irresponsible, and directly responsible for thwarting the World Peace that Richard Nixon would certainly have won.