Tattle: People Paper atop 'Time' list

AS CHRIS BROWN and Rihanna have kept their noses unbloodied today and Jennifer Aniston has not confirmed she's carrying the baby John Mayer and Life & Style Weekly allegedly put inside her, Tattle has a chance to examine the state of the newspaper industry:

The Philadelphia Daily News is No. 1.

So says the 24/7 Wall St. blog that Time magazine's Web site was nice enough to give server space to. 24/7 peered into its crystal ball, consulted its psychic and read its Tarot cards to determine that your favorite People Paper is the nation's No. 1 major newspaper . . . likely to fold or go exclusively digital. The good news is that Time called us a major newspaper, which must have come as a huge shock to the people at the Inquirer.

Now it's one thing for a blogger to dance on our grave, but for a magazine like Time, which is now no bigger than a pamphlet due to losses in advertising, it seems a bit unseemly. The DN, however, is at least proud to be in excellent company. The remainder of the list of soon-to-be-deceased print papers includes the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Miami Herald, Detroit News, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun Times, New York Daily News, Fort Worth Star Telegram and Cleveland Plain Dealer.

What makes our non-Big Apple Daily News an especially odd choice for No. 1 on the list is that unlike most of the other papers, we make money. We don't make a ton of money, our clunky computers have less power than an iPod and a child who gets a few dollars a week allowance may have a larger travel budget, but our staff has less fat than Bar Rafaeli and our content generates a few hundred thousand hits per day on philly.com.

We're also accustomed to reading our own obituary and then outliving the obit writer - the Sword of Damocles has been hanging over our heads ever since Damocles himself wrote Tattle.

So we're not bitter or anything.

That being said, Tattle has spoken with industry experts, checked parent company financials and polled readers and determined that the major magazine most likely to fold in the coming year is:

Time.

Go get 'em, Newsweek.

Tattbits

* "Dreamgirls" always had soul.

Now it has Seoul.

A revival of the Tony Award-winning hit is having its world premiere in South Korea with an all-Korean cast. It is expected to head to Broadway in 2010, recast with American actors (although it sure would be interesting with Korean Dreamettes).

Auditions have begun in New York City.

* OK! reports that Ashlee Simpson-Wentz is joining the cast of the new "Melrose Place."

As if we needed one more reason not to watch "Melrose Place."

* The U.S. economy isn't totally

dead. A softcover copy of the first Harry Potter book has sold for just over $19,000, according to Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. Oh, scratch that. The winning bidder was from . . . Dubai. *

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

Send e-mail to gensleh@phillynews.com