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SPACE ALIENS MADE ME CYNICAL
Paskal, who produced a recent radio documentary on Tabloid Valley for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is a free-lance writer based in London.
Tabloid Valley, on Florida's east coast, is home to five of America's six largest supermarket tabloids. The six are evenly divided between two huge publishing empires, the Enquirer/Star Group (National Enquirer, Star, and Weekly World News), based in Lantana, and Globe Marketing Services (Glove, National Examiner, and Sun), headquartered in Boca Raton.
Although all six carry a mix of human interest stories, celebrity gossip, and the bizarre, they carry them in quite different proportions. Globe Marketing Services and the Enquirier/Star Group, meanwhile, issue roughly parallel product lines: the Enquirer and the Globe, flagships of their respective organizations, revel primarily in A-list celebrities (Liz Taylor, Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox); the Star and Examiner wallow mostly in B-list celebrities (soap opera and country western stars, Democratic party nominees); the Sun and the Weekly World News, which has attracted a cult following, stick to the weird. In each of these pairs, the Enquire/Star Group papers -- better funded and with more pretensions -- tend toward the high end of the spectrum.
Tabloid reporters include a few journalists who migrated from such places as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor, as well as an enormous number of top-flight ex-Fleet Streeters, weaned on the English tabloid and attracted by serious money. Starting salary for a cub reporter at the Enquirer is reputed to be $ 57,000.
While cutbacks plague the mainstream press, the tabloid industry is thriving. Tabloid circulation is enormous (the Enquirer alone claims four million readers), and these papers' influence on TV, the rest of the print media, and the tenor of public debate is growing. Just ask Bill Clinton.
So perhaps it's time to listen to some words of wisdom about Journalism Today, as it is seen and practiced in Tabloid Valley.
SPACE ALIEN RAPED MY ELECTRIC BROOM! Weekly World News
Sal Ivone, managing editor of Weekly World News: "If someone calls me up and says their toaster is talking to them, I don't refer them to professional help, I say, 'Put the toaster on the phone.'"
ROSEANNE IS A LIAR! National Enquirer
Enquirer editor-in-chief Iain Calder: "We cover Hollywood the same way The New York Times or The Washington Post would cover the Pentagon. We don't wait for a story to break. If you hae a new hit show, chances are we have a cameraman there who works for the Enquirer. Of the top star, we'll probably have her hairdresser who works for us, her p.r. guy, or someone in her lawyer's office, maybe her boyfriend maybe her husband. Basically, you've got to look at it like a military exercise."
BABY BORN WITH TATOO OF SOLAR SYSTEM! Weekly World News
Weekly World News reporter Jack Alexander: "I always tell them I'm doing a series of articles, I'm a religious editor or a travel editor. That puts them at ease. I say I'm with The News in Palm Beach and I try not to say more than that. I want to put questions in [the source's] mouth, so he just says 'yes' or 'no.' Then we will quote him as saying that, [I ask the source] 'Could this happen?' He says, 'Oh, yeah.' Then, as far as we're concerned, it did happen."
NEVER SEEN BEFORE SHOCKING AUTOPSY PHOTOS THAT BLOW THE LID OFF JKD COVER-UP! Globe
Ex-Fleet Street editor, current Globe editor Wendy Henry: "The great thing about working here is the simplemindedness that sales are everything, and a great honesty about what sort of a paper we are and who we are aiming at. None of the political nonsense nightmare that was got into in Britain, with the chattering classes and The Independent and worrying about what the bloody Guardian was saying about you every day."
NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD! Weekly World News
Eddie Clontz, editor, Weekly World News: "Everybody else is trying to demystify everything. We're trying to do the opposite, to mystify again. We're in a constant struggle against medicine, science, and religion. In religion they're telling people more and more, 'Miracles don't really happen.' So I have to keep coming back with BLIND MOM CAN SEE AFTER BABY GIVES HER A HUG.
BILL CLINTON'S FOUR-IN-A-BED SEX ORGY WITH BLACK HOOKERS! Globe
Weekly World News reporter Susan Jimison: "In an age where people read less and concentrate in shorter time periods, tabloid is basically an attempt to catch attention with something flashy and condensed. That is happening in television, to some extent on Sesame Street, on radio, and certainly we see it in what's happening to newspapers. There is a general tendency in that direction; everyone is becoming more tabloid."
