Remember when newsmagazines simply reported news and were not themselves the subject of news reports? In the last couple months, both of the biggest have made headlines.

News stories focused on Newsweek’s mistaken report that interrogators flushed a Koran down a toilet in Guantanamo. After a furor, the magazine first retracted the story, then apologized. Then last week Time magazine’s editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine, made headlines when he agreed to turn over reporter Matthew Cooper’s e-mails and notes to Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald investigating the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA agent. (Mr. Cooper eventually agreed to testify about his source.)

Vanity Fair’s press critic, Michael Wolff, told me, “I would say that it is mostly coincidence that these stories happened so closely in time. But there is no doubt that the greater polarization in the country has made not only what the media reports but the media itself the subtext in many stories.”

Michael Hoyt, editor in chief of Columbia Journalism Review, agrees. “The press is in a weaker position,” he said. “Currently, there is a lack of respect for the press by the public and a sustained attack by the administration.” He also noted that magazines have made mistakes before without the reaction that greeted Newsweek’s error.

What’s also fueling this new attention is increased coverage of the press by the press, day in and day out. Most major newspapers now have reporters and columnists who focus on the press, and dozens of blogs are always ready to analyze and debate the coverage of news events. Last week the Washington Post’s fashion editor, Robin Givhan, even reviewed what New York Times reporter Judith Miller wore in the courtroom when she was sent to jail. Treating her like a celebrity, Ms. Givhan compared her outfit to the one that rap singer Lil’ Kim wore to her sentencing the same day. One wonders if Ms. Givhan would have reviewed the outfit of a Washington Post reporter on her way to jail.

“The media is the great influencer,” Mr. Wolff said. “There used to be this conceit if you were a senior journalist reporting about people in government, you were reporting about really important people. The truth is, it is the senior journalist who is really important, not the government official, because the journalist has the most influence.”

Yet at the same time, Mr. Wolff said, the attention the press now gives itself is a form of “dysfunctional narcissism.” “Most news organizations are now parts of big organizations. Journalists know that what they are really subject to is the marketplace.” One other reason Mr. Wolff believes press coverage of the press is increasing: It’s cost efficient. “It’s a subject that is really cheap to cover.”

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In case you didn’t know – though it is hard to believe you don’t – “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” goes on sale at exactly 12:01 a.m. this Saturday. Nearly 11 million copies of the book (10.8 to be exact) will be released at that moment in America, with millions more put on sale around the world. The book has been kept so firmly under wraps that a couple of guys in a town near London, who had managed to obtain a copy, demanded the equivalent of $91,000 for it from a British reporter. When he tried to grab it, they pulled out a pistol and shot at him.

The reporter, John Askill, said, “[It was] one of the most frightening moments in my 28 years as a reporter. But I was hit by the ridiculous irony that, having been in war-torn Afghanistan and Kosovo, I should be shot for the sake of a Harry Potter novel.” The men were subsequently arrested.

But passions do run high, both from Hogwarts fanatics who will be holding midnight costume parties at bookstores throughout the country to celebrate the release and from booksellers and retailers who will benefit from the enormous sales.

Stephen Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said the company expected to sell 50,000 copies of the new Harry Potter book per hour in the first 24 hours after its release. Last week, Scholastic, the book’s publisher, used 600 tractor-trailers to distribute the book to wholesalers. At the same time, Amazon turned over more than a million packages to UPS, which will hand the books over to local post offices for delivery on July 16. Wal-Mart will be staying open 24 hours to accommodate Potter purchasers, in and out of appropriate costume.

In fact, June 16 will probably be the biggest publishing sales day ever. And J.K. Rowling, the series’ creator, a former welfare mother and current billionaire, is already the richest author in history.

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There are even more new magazines on the horizon. The launches of 32 new magazines were announced in the last three months. Several are spinoffs of established magazines aimed at the Hispanic market including ESPN Deportes, Prevention en Espanol, and Trucker News en Espanol. So far in 2005 that makes eight new magazines aimed at Spanish-language readers.

Big publishers have announced several projects. Conde Nast is planning a September launch for Men’s Vogue. Hearst is launching a new women’s weekly called Quick and Simple. Weider is launching yet another parenting title, Mother and Baby.

Closer to home is JerseyFit, a health and fitness magazine published by the same group that publishes PhillyFit. And there’s the Brooklynite, a quarterly described as covering “culture and politics in the borough of Brooklyn.” There is also Crave New York, a food magazine for New Yorkers who view the city food-first.

Some even more offbeat magazines include Geezerjock for, yes, people over 40 who still want to compete; Vetz for veterinarians; and Female Poker Player for – you guessed it. But perhaps my favorite is Boink, an “adult” magazine for students at Boston University. It will be a glossy magazine all about sex, featuring photographs and profiles. But it will not, according to its imaginatively named publishers, Boink Publishing, “be affiliated with the university.”

Quel surprise!