While reading Vanity Fair’s long profile of the Gosselins’ rise to tabloid infamy, I found myself noting where author Nancy Jo Sales missed a detail, or left out something that seemed pertinent to the story. That’s the thing with the Gosselins – there’s no way to keep up with every bit of trivia in their twisted tale. The article did help me see the forest instead of focusing on the trees, though, and the main thing I came away with was an understanding of exactly how and why the Gosselins have dominated the tabloid press for the past six months. More tabloid cover stories have run about them than anyone else this year, including Brad and Angelina. The Gosselins are easy – there are tons of people connected to them willing to talk to the press, (not all of whom have slept with Jon, although it can seem that way) and they sell tabloids. They’re also cheap in that photos of them are much more reasonable than other “celebrities.” It’s a story custom made for the tabloids, with a cheating dad, a domineering mom, and eight innocent kids caught in the cross hairs.

Kate Gosselin grants an interview to Vanity Fair, and she isn’t presented in the most flattering light. She comes across as kind of a minor diva, like someone with a sense of entitlement coupled with enough self absorption to make her somewhat clueless to the plight of her children. Most outlets are focusing on Kate’s statement that her kids are having a hard time with the divorce and are acting out. If you read it in context Kate seems to be surprised by the fact that her children pick up on the conflict between their parents. Most of us would respond with something like “Well, duh.”

The author also recounts how the press turned from vilifying Kate with covers like “Mommy, You’re So Mean,” and “Mom To Monster,” to focusing on Jon’s infidelity and partying. It was when Jon’s affair with the nanny came to light that most people saw him for the opportunistic douche he is.

Kate Gosselin’s Diva moments
On not being able to go out to Nobu in NY for sushi due to the paparazzi: “You’re like a prisoner”

On the paparazzi: “I can tell you why probably Princess Diana died. Those flashes are blinding!”
“They’re all sort of bald and fattish, aren’t they? They have a look.”

On someone saying she’s ‘a massive story at the moment’: “At the moment?”

Kate broke up with Jon in October of last year
Last October, says the source, Kate sat Jon down at the kitchen table and said she had “grown out of him, she was done with him, and she no longer wanted to be with him. She said, ‘I don’t even know why I married you in the first place.’” A spokesman for Kate says she has “chosen to take the high road and not get into those details.”

Throughout the fall, Jon was living in a guest room above the garage. And then in January, says his friend, lonely and unhappy, he started going out to bars. In March, while Jon was visiting his mother in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, he showed up at a beer bash thrown by Juniata College seniors; they took pictures and put them in the college paper. “Playing beer pong and all those fun things,” Kate says.

On how the Gosselins became tabloid darlings
“You have to understand,” says Kate, “that was not the first night he was out. It had been a couple of months. He had been staying out till two a.m. I knew it was just a matter of time” before somebody in the media caught on.

And someone did. “It was the beginning of this incredible phenomenon known as Jon and Kate Gosselin,” says Candace Trunzo, editor of Star. After the Juniata College pictures hit the Internet, Trunzo sent a reporter out to Pennsylvania, where the reporting, she says, was like fish in a barrel. “Everybody wanted to talk about them. They had become a real-life soap opera. The show was never as interesting as the two of them in real life.” Star has put Jon and Kate on its cover 15 times since March.

Another element of the Jon-and-Kate story that can’t be discounted is the financial woes of print media in the Great Recession. Jon and Kate were bad behavior from heaven to tabloids beset by budget concerns and battling a waning interest in actual celebrities, who are often more in control of their image. “Brad and Angelina try to be discreet,” says Richard Spencer of In Touch, “whereas Jon and Kate, they serve it daily to you on a platter.” The Jon-and-Kate story is also cheap to produce; the price of paparazzi shots of the family runs significantly lower than pictures of the latest Kardashian wedding.

In Touch sold close to a million copies with Jon’s cover exclusive “I’m Tired of Being Blamed.” Sales of Us went from around 600,000 to more than a million with many of its Jon-and-Kate covers, according to Min. Star won’t give out figures, but Candace Trunzo says, “It was one of our biggest stories of the year.”
The Jon-and-Kate mania was also assisted by a number of willing inside sources. While the tabloids all claim not to pay for stories, it is generally thought that they do—and money may be an attractive incentive to some potential sources in a bad economy.

“The ones claiming we are exploiting our children,” Kate says—here referring to the tabloids and other media that have criticized her for putting her kids on television—“are the ones exploiting our children!”

Jon’s then-manager denies he said the thing about Diddy
Jon seems to be convinced that he is a celebrity—a real celebrity. “At our V.M.A. party,” says Richard Spencer, “he told one of our guests, ‘Ya know, I’m so cool with my fame right now, I can just go up to Diddy and be like, What’s up, Sean?’”

“He would never make a comment like that,” said Mike Heller, Jon’s manager. “He doesn’t look at himself as a celeb. He looks at himself as a guy the world knows but only because he had a show.” [Note: here’s the article that quotes him saying that]

On when the press turned against Jon: sleeping with the babysitter
But what Jon does that really gets him screwed in medialand is to screw the babysitter—allegedly.

Jon has reportedly already had dalliances with a number of women—a Pennsylvania teacher, Deanna Hummel, 24 (who denied it); the Star reporter, Kate Major, 26 (who resigned after the tryst, calling it a conflict of interest); and the daughter of Kate’s plastic surgeon, Hailey Glassman, 22, with whom Jon has said he is in love and whom he has reportedly asked to marry him. “He’s a horny dude!” says Candace Trunzo.

And yet, amazingly, America’s media consumers still felt sorry for him. Kate had been that objectionable in their eyes. “But now the tide has started to turn,” says Richard Spencer.

In September, the babysitter in question, Stephanie Santoro, 23, told her story to In Touch (“Nanny Admits Affair with Jon!”). “I was scared one of the kids was going to pop their heads out” of the windows while she and Jon were in the backyard cavorting in the hot tub, said Santoro, “but he told me to relax.”

Kate’s revelation about her kids
We get to talking about that, about the pressure on her children—not just from the divorce, but the intense media attention upon them and their parents. Kate admits they have been “acting out” lately. “I’m trying to give them the grace to see, if they’re acting out of line, I’m trying to look deeper into why that is,” she says. “Why the kids are acting out. Cause it’s all inter-related. I mean, they don’t see it, but it’s all interconnected.”

“They miss him,” she says, meaning Jon. “They say they miss him. I imagine they say the same thing when I’m away … ”

The TLC publicist who is with us that day, Joanna Brahim, looks apoplectic. Kids acting out, being upset about their parents’ divorce—this isn’t part of the Kate Plus Eight story line. “We should probably stop there,” she says, after a minute.

[From Vanity Fair, thanks to Oxa for the tip]

The end of the story asks “When will it all end?” and they quote the former editor of US Weekly, Janice Min, who says “the only thing we can be sure of now, is 10, 15 years down the road, the E! True Hollywood Story: The Gosselin Kids.” Given the way their parents are behaving, that’s probably sadly true.

In the latest Gosselin news, the nanny says it’s not true that the kids didn’t like filming the show – they loved it and that Jon is money-hungry, while Jon posed for a bunch of PDA pics over the weekend with his on-again girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, in New York.

Here are a bunch of Gosselin tabloid covers, thanks to Stacie who scans them for us.