There have been a total of five editorial cuts at Bauer Publishing’s InTouch and Life & Style. The New York Post reports that among those let go was In Touch veteran Michael Todd, who had been the magazine’s executive director of photography since 2002. Nicole Tereza, design director for In Touch for the past two years, was also dropped.

Dan Wakeford, editorial director of both magazines, told the Post the recent cuts were nothing big and things are going great. ”It’s minimal restructuring compared to anything else other magazines are doing,” he insisted.

We’re guessing Todd and Tereza don’t agree with that assessment.

Gossip rags love a good celebrity breakup, so naturally, they were all over the split of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. We would add something here about how creepy the whole situation has been, but you know, Scientologists. Those people don’t mess around.

Most celebrity glossies weren’t afraid of rustling some feathers though, and they were rewarded for it. According to the New York Post, the titles that went big on the TomKat news sold well. People saw newsstands sales jump to 1.4 million, Us Weekly sold 720,000 and In Touch had 632,000 copies fly off the shelves.

OK! — which was prevented from putting the Holmes and Cruise divorce on its cover because of its deadline — sold below 200,000 copies.

For celebrity magazines, this proves that when famous people experience difficult times, it’s a good idea to talk about it as much as possible.

Bauer Publishing has named Jared Shapiro editorial director of news and entertainment for In Touch and Life & Style, a new role at the company. Shapiro has been with Bauer since 2005, most recently as executive editor of Life & Style. As editorial director, he will report to Dan Wakeford, editor-in-chief of the two magazines.

Bauer has also named Terri White executive editor of Life & Style. White was most recently editor-in-chief of Buzz, an entertainment  magazine published alongside Britain’s The Sun.

“The appointment of such strong talent to our executive editorial team reinforces the extraordinary quality that Bauer is known to deliver at the newsstand,” said Sebastian Raatz, executive vice president of Bauer Publishing. “The talent that we’ve positioned to lead these staffs will take Bauer’s entertainment group to the next level.”

Each move is effective immediately.

The Kim Kardashian Effect — the remarkable positive impact of putting Kardashian on a magazine cover — might have seen its last days. According to the New York Post, this week four celebrity magazines  — Us Weekly, In Touch, Life & Style and OK! — featured one of the Kardashian’s, and all of their newsstand sales were down.

Us Weekly’s Khloe cover  and OK!’s Kim covers were both among the titles’ worst-selling issues of the year, while In Touch’s Kourtney cover and Life & Style’s Kim cover were both slightly down in newsstands sales.

Does this mean the Kim Kardashian Effect is finished? Never! It’s the holidays, so people aren’t buying as many magazines. Plus, some might still be annoyed at Kim for making a quick buck or million by getting married for a few hours. We expect 2012 will see the Kim Kardashian Effect back in all its glory. And if it’s not, she can always just get married again; that’ll get people’s attention. Maybe this time she’ll even try someone in a different sport. Tiger Woods is still single, right?

Yesterday was all doom and gloom for the future of print over at The New York Times, which reported an average newsstand loss in the magazine industry of 9.1 percent and an overall circulation decline of 2.2 percent from the previous year. While we floated the idea that some of the publishers that actually showed gains (Rodale and Meredith) operated in a niche market for customers, there might be even better news over at AdAge, where Nat Ives pointed out that the individual sale losses have actually slowed down in the past year. Big sellers like Cosmopolitan and Us Weekly either slowed down their decline to the single digits, or actually improved their single-copy sales, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. So what’s the logic behind the market? Why did Us Weekly gain 1 percent in sales while In Touch plummeted over 10 percent? And what can cause a magazine to do fare better in subscription form than single-issue, like Woman’s Day?

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Yesterday, we learned that celebrity editor-in-chief Janice Min was stepping down from the top slot at Us Weekly. The question on everyone’s mind is: what’s next for Min?

WWD scored an interview with Min and, although they couldn’t get her to give a hint about whether she has a new gig lined up, the editor did admit she doesn’t think she’ll be staying in magazines.

“I don’t think magazines are in my future,” Min told WWD. “I would be surprised if I worked for another magazine. Us Weekly is the ultimate magazine experience. And I now have the freedom to talk to people and figure out what I’ll do next.”

WWD also has some ideas about who might be in line to replace Min, if Michael Steele, who will step into her role for the time being, takes the editor-in-chief role on only temporarily. Some names mentioned include Us‘s Los Angeles bureau chief Melanie Bromley and the magazine’s news director Lara Cohen, rival pub Life & Style‘s editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford and In Touch eic Richard Spencer; People magazine’s Peter Castro, former editor-in-chief of British OK! Nicola McCarthy and ex-Min staffer Colleen Curtis.

One has to wonder at the logic of a magazine distribution standoff in the midst of a financial crisis that’s threatening to sink the industry. Nonetheless (as threatened) Time Inc., American Media, and Bauer have pulled their magazines from Wal-Mart, the single biggest magazine retailer in the country, over a dispute with wholesalers Anderson News and Source Interlink Cos, who (as threatened) have imposed a seven cent surcharge on every copy delivered.

This means until the dispute is settled Wal-Mart will be without copies of People, Sports Illustrated, Time, In Touch, Life & Style, Star, and National Enquirer. Time Inc. says they have pulled together their own network of wholesalers, which is great but doesn’t solve the problem of Wal-Mart who says it is standing behind Source Interlink and Anderson.

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