Missed edit window: I assumed the OP was about tabloid newspapers. There are also magazines like Closer, Hello, Take a Break, which make no such pretensions. I’m assuming that they’re popular because they have stories which are voyeuristic (“I married my husband’s rapist”) and appealing to shallow tastes and vanity (“Celebrities looking like shit!” “Lose 50 pounds in 3 weeks!”).
I would have assumed scandal mags referred to the gossip mags like Heat et al.
A friend of mine, who is a hairdresser and thus is surrounded by gossip mags all day at the salon, takes pictures of the ridiculous headlines and uploads them to facebook.
Some of my favourites;
‘BBC man beaten up by monkey cop!’
‘Maimed by a parsnip?’
‘27 STONE: Bulimic who forgot to vomit’
‘Man eaten by parrot!’
‘Haunted by a sex mad ghost!’
‘I stopped stripping for Jesus!’