After talking to a few random people, I figured out the following:

• Some magazines now use articles as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals.
• The print-driven haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million.
• Attack magazines are but a sliver of the rapidly shrinking periodicalsphere.
• A magazine columnist can go out and make any statement about anybody, and you can't control it. That's a difficult thing.
• Even some magazine columnists see the harm they can pose.
• Yet magazines edit and censor print content all the time – to protect their own interests.

Damn. I gotta start staying away from magazines.