This was listed as one of the top "National and World News" stories listed on the front page of Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel online..

Sad times.

Nicole Richie trying to gain weight:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Nicole Richie, whose drastic weight loss spawned speculation that she has an eating disorder, acknowledges she is "too thin" and is getting treatment to add pounds, in an interview in Vanity Fair.

"I know I'm too thin right now, so I wouldn't want any young girl looking at me and saying, `That's what I want to look like,'" the 24-year-old "Simple Life" star tells the magazine in its June issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

"I do know that they will, which is another reason I really do need to do something about it," she says. "I'm not happy with the way I look right now."

The 5-foot-1-inch Richie was visibly heavier in 2003 when she began filming TV's "The Simple Life," which features Richie and ex-friend Paris Hilton thrown into normal jobs and responsibilities.

Richie, who has said she gained weight during a stint in rehab for heroin addiction, says she doesn't know how much she weighs today.

However, she says her eating habits are far from healthy: "I eat the worst foods - salty cheese-and-grease kind of stuff."

Stress causes her to lose her appetite, she says, and her split in December from ex-fiance Adam Goldstein, a professional club DJ who goes by the name DJ AM, didn't help matters. "I had a bad breakup, and it eats me up inside when I'm upset about something," says Richie, who is dating Goldstein again.

"I get really stressed out, and I do lose my appetite, but I do force myself to eat. I tried to put the weight on my way, eating burritos, but that wasn't working, so I started seeing a nutritionist and a doctor," Richie tells the magazine.

Dr. Jeffery Wilkins, vice-chair of the department of psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who treats Richie, says doctors are "working on a systematic plan to get more calories in, and we're going to watch and see if it succeeds."

"If it's not anorexia, she should be able to gain the weight," he says. "If it ends up being anorexia, we'll help her with that."

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Look, I'm not an expert, but I bet that if reporters tried hard enough they could find something more newsworthy going on in the world right now. This isn't news. Period. Much less one of the top "National and World News" stories of the day.

This. This is why journalists, REAL journalists - Ones with honor and a desire to tell a good story, cannot and do not get any respect. This is the sort of crap that makes me wonder why this is what I want to do with my life.

Also, I'm getting really sick of "news" articles that do nothing but report what some other newspaper or magazine is printing. By that I mean that the sole point and source of this article is Vanity Fair's new issue. Basically, Vanity Fair leaks early copies or releases with tidbits of a new story and some jackass writes an article on said leak, thereby advertising the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair. It's brilliant marketing on Vanity Fair's part, but what newspaper writes an article based solely on another, upcoming article? That's not reporting.