Amid the verbal fireworks set off between Vanity Fair‘s Michael Wolff and Columbia journalism professor Todd Gitlin during a PBS panel earlier this week, Us Weekly editor Janice Min expressed the trouble she and other women in her magazine’s demographic — 31-year-olds, on average — are having in keeping up with news that doesn’t involve Jessica Simpson:

These are women who are probably not engaged with the prominent issues of the day, Iraq, terrorism — they are tuned out. News is not being presented to them in interesting ways … Believe it or not, I am actually quite interested in Iraq and politics, and I find CNN or most evening news broadcasts unwatchable.

Min, who said she employs a “whole armada of reporters” for Simpson, said she goes online for hard news because she feels “it’s a waste of my time to watch a lot of these things on TV.”

If, as Min says, women are abandoning TV news in favor of a quick scan online, could she envision a time when all celebrity news is consumed online? Min told FishbowlNY no: “Women will always be interested in something they can take to the beach.”

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