From Sunday’s New York Times:

Eduardo Sánchez Junco, Founder of Fawning Magazine, Is Dead at 67

Lede:

If you want to be the subject of a stunningly flattering profile in Hello magazine, one of Britain’s most widely read celebrity weeklies, all you really need are a title, a castle and a pen with which to endorse the handsome check that will surely be sent your way — or, in a pinch, if you are untitled but sufficiently boldface, just the pen.

Hello! in other words is a first-rate example of reverse checkbook journalism.

As The Daily Telegraph of London wrote in its obituary of Mr. Sánchez Junco on Friday, “The magazine quickly earned a reputation for paying hefty fees for treacly interviews with the rich, royal or famous; its fixer and star interviewer, the Marquesa de Varela, a Uruguayan socialite, was said to travel the world laden with cash stuffed into designer suitcases to clinch her deals.”

Sample cover, featuring Rupert Murdoch at his daughters’ baptism:

Regardless, just shoot me if the headline of my obituary contains the word “fawning.”

Then again, I wouldn’t mind running into the Marquesa de Valera sometime.

If only to carry her suitcases for a bit.