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NAMING NAMES: As Us Weekly celebrates its honorees for Best Dressed New Yorkers, People will unveil its Best and Worst Dressed List in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday. Among those celebrated this year will be Freida Pinto, Beyoncé Knowles, Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon and the characters from “Mad Men.” But the beautiful ones aren’t the cover story — it was reserved for Patrick Swayze, who died Monday night after a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer. That may give People a boost over 2008 — when Best and Worst nominees Rihanna, Carrie Underwood and Angelina Jolie were on the cover, the issue sold 1.1 million, a below-average issue for the Time Inc. weekly, and missed its increased 3.6 million rate base the company guarantees to advertisers. Us Weekly also opted to put Swayze on its cover, which will be distributed Friday.
People drew 99 pages of advertising for its Best and Worst Dressed issue, a 17 percent gain from last year’s version, driven by 35 new advertisers including Lancôme, Kors Fragrance, Beckham Fragrance, Vanity Fair and Latisse. That’s the biggest issue so far in 2009, and puts People’s year-to-date total at just 8 percent fewer pages than in 2008, at 2,348. Meanwhile, Us Weekly has three weeks in a row of style coverage that culminates with coverage of its Best Dressed New Yorkers event in next week’s issue. Publisher Vicci Lasdon Rose said the Sept. 21 style issue; the Sept. 28 one, which will cover both New York Fashion Week and the MTV Video Music Awards, and the Oct. 5 issue were sold as a package to advertisers, helping to keep ad pages across the three issues on par with last year. — S.D.S.
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