Gossip magazine

in excess of ten million, and it had many competitors, with names such as Whisper, Dare, Suppressed, The Lowdown, Hush-Hush, and Uncensored.

Brevities started out covering high society and the A-list of the New York theater world, but by the 1920s focused on society scandal and the destruction of reputations culminating in its editor, Stephen Clow, and two of his associates being charged with using the mails to defraud due to allegations that the magazine was a blackmail racket threatening to publish material injurious to the reputations of businesses and individuals unless they purchased advertising.

Clow revived the tabloid in 1930 and the new incarnation covered more general vice and ran splashy, highly sensationalized features on sex, drugs, gang violence and crime.

The history of gossip magazines also includes a few eccentric titles that flouted the usual rules of acceptable taste, such as the sexually explicit Hollywood Star of the 1970s.

in the United Kingdom, Gente and Chi in Italy, Actustar and Voici in France, Seiska in Finland, Bunte in Germany, and East Touch in Hong Kong.