We need to get out more. Because, if we got out more, we might have seen the Atlantic on the newsstands, and then we would have known that the cover (which we got in our inboxes last week and promptly deleted) were real.

That really is Britney Spears on the cover.

David Samuels explains himself:

“You’re talking about a business that’s worth, at this point, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And the focus of my piece is an agency called X17, which is the biggest photo agency in Hollywood, and has produced almost all the memorable shots of Britney Spears and many other celebrities.

It was started by a guy named Francois-Regis Navarre, who was the correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, and for the AFP in Los Angeles, who actually covered the Rodney King trial and riots [LAUGHS] for AFP.

[snip]

He tried to do, you know, serious photojournalism about gangs of L.A. and this and that, and he found there was no market for it.

But one day he took a picture of Rod Stewart, I think it was, at Fred Segal, and sold the picture instantly. And suddenly he just said, you know what, this is the market that’s out there and so I’m going to become a paparazzi.”