Archive for the &;National-Enquirer&; Category

Enquirer LosesPulitzer

April 12, 2010

Stop the presses! Despite scooping the mainstream media on John Edwards and his (I always want to say &;space alien&;) lovechild, the National Enquirer loses in Pulitzer race. I&;m sure the winners were worthy, but it&;s clear the fix was in&;

Tags:John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, Pulitzer, shrinking-mainstream-media Posted in Journalism, National-Enquirer | Leave a Comment &;

EnquirerEligible!

February 23, 2010

A great injustice has been addressed!  The National Enquirer is now eligible for a Pulitzer for its John Edwards coverage! I highly doubt they&;ll win.  Old battleships like the Pulitzer Committee (itself named after one of the greatest &;yellow journalists&; of all time) don&;t turn around so fast.  But hey, even the LA Times links to the Enquirer now. Quite a change from when I was ostracized at dinner parties for writing for &;that rag.&;

Tags:John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, Pulitzer-Prize, The-National-Enquirer Posted in Journalism, Los-Angeles-Times, National-Enquirer, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;

LA Times Links to Enquirer for John EdwardsCoverage

February 11, 2010

If you can&;t beat them, link to them. The LA Times actually printed a story today not only &;crediting&; the National Enquirer with the scoop that John Edwards has supposedly proposed to main squeeze/girlfriend/homewrecker/babymama Rielle Hunter, but actually put a link in the Times story taking you directly to the Enquirer piece! Perhaps the Times also has a dented Pulitzer or two lying around it can mail to the Enquirer to acknowledge its Edwards coverage, since the Pulitzer committee won&;t do it. UPDATE: Here&;s the Times linking sentence: &;For the Enquirer&;s full article on the Edwards&; engagement, click HERE&;

Tags:John-Edwards, John-Edwards-lovechild, Los-Angeles-Times, National-Enquirer, Pulitzer, Rielle-Hunter Posted in Los-Angeles-Times, National-Enquirer, Politics, tabloid-journalism | 3 Comments &;

Give the National Enquirer aPulitzer

January 25, 2010

As an alumni of the then-Lantana-based tabloid, I was tickled to see that the editor of the National Enquirer, Barry Levine, had nominated the mag (rag) for a Pulitzer for its role in outing John Edward&;s infidelities and lies.  As we noted back in 2008, any journalist could learn how to do a story from the Enquirer. Although Edwards has been exposed as a truly empty suit and his wife as a shrew, the real scandal here is how the so-called &;mainstream media&; held its nose and studious avoided the story, which we were on top of a year and a half ago, for months and months. The Enquirer nominated themselves for &;distinguished investigative reporting by a team, presented in a series of articles, and for a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs. &;  As Emily Miller puts it, &;The story has led to a grand jury investigation of Edwards&; use of campaign funds and the political downfall of a two-time Democratic presidential candidate. &;  She says editor Levine told her, &;Our Enquirer reporters do deserve to be nominated for a Pulitzer, but you know the mainstream media would rather see the Earth explode first!&; Sadly, if not surprisingly, the Pulitzer committee found technical reasons to disqualify the Enquirer&;s bid before it ever really got started.   It&;s ironic, too, because the Pulitzers were founded by a founder of yellow journalism, Joseph Pulitzer. Now the beleaguered priests of the press are too good to dirty their hands with the muck-raking Enquirer.  As Gawker&;s Ravi Somalya adds: If the Washington Post, or the New Orleans Times-Picayune or any paper really, had broken a story of this magnitude their Pulitzer nod would barely be in doubt. Edwards called the Enquirer, while trying to disparage its claims he was cheating and had fathered a child &;tabloid trash.&; That stigma is the only reason its investigative reporters will not be considered.

Tags:death-of-journalism, John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, The-National-Enquirer Posted in National-Enquirer, Politics, tabloid-journalism | 2 Comments &;

Sarah Palin Meets NationalEnquirer

September 2, 2008

Extending their celebrity franchise into politics, the National Enquirer is apparently launching a bipartisan campaign to investigate America&;s best-looking national politicians.   For months a lonely beacon of truth about John Edwards, the Enquirer is now looking into Sarah Palin.  Not surprisingly, they find a mother-daughter catfight in this &;Jamie Lynn Spears&; family.  Says the Enquirer:

&;Palin planned for the wedding to take place right after the Republican National Convention and then she was going to announce the pregnancy.But Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.&;   

Interestingly, the Enquirer claims that it was their reporting (again) that reluctantly pulled the truth out of Palin, not her truth-telling nature.

&;The ultra-conservative governor’s announcement about her daughter’s pregnancy came hours after The ENQUIRER informed her representatives and family members of Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol’s child, that we were aware of the pregnancy and were going to break the news. In a preemptive strike Palin released the news, creating political shockwaves.&;

  How do they do it?  This CBS story shows a bit&;although in a blunder now sadly typical of the mainstream media, they get the name of the Enquirer&;s founder wrong&;it was Generoso Pope, not David Pope.

With Palin, once again the mainstream media (and apparently the McCain campaign) is being scooped by the National Enquirer.  So far the Enquirer&;s circulation hasn&;t responded to its newfound public-spiritedness, but if the national media wasn&;t so stubborn in its death spiral, it too could learn from the plucky tabloid. They have the story the public wants to read &;even before the investigative reporters have settled into Anchorage.&;    

Tags:Bristol-Palin, John-Edwards-lovechild, National-Enquirer, Sarah-Palin Posted in Journalism, National-Enquirer, newspapers, Politics, public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;

Batboy, Goodbye: Weekly World NewsR.I.P.

July 26, 2007

Sad to hear the Weekly World News is gone (or gone to the Web, far from the supermarket racks but at home with the other rumor-mongers)  I had just bought a copy for my 8-year old.  We had chuckles over the cover story about how &;President Kennedy is alive and fighting for the U.S. Navy in Iraq&;&;that&;s one you&;d really like to believe was true.  The technical term for stories like that are &;too good to check.&;  Of course, the Weekly World News, which bills billed itself as the &;world&;s most reliable newspaper&;,  never checked anything.  When I had my orientation at the National Enquirer in lovely Lantana, Florida, back in the 1980&;s, I asked where the reporters for their &;sister&; publication, the WWN, were.  A bloated reporter jerked his thumb towards a distant room: &;They make it up over there.&;

New Discovery Proves —CAVEMEN INVENTED ROCK MUSIC!

Posted in National-Enquirer, tabloid-journalism, too-good-to-check, Weekly-World-News | 1 Comment &;

Quote Whores and TrainedSeals

June 14, 2007

Every journalist needs sources for his stories.  The three-source story is the model, although abandoned in this LA Times piece on Tom Cruise. Let&;s say you were doing a business story on the new Apple iPhone.  (A flood of these are coming.)  You&;d interview someone from Apple (&;the vendor&;),  an industry analyst for third-party commentary, and an end user, a partner like AT&T or a competitor.  Story&;s done, on to the next. Because reporters can&;t interview themselves, they cultivate sources they can get to say the stuff they want, or at least interesting stuff.   They usually have to have some standing as an &;expert&;, such as a professorship or authorship of a book. Some of these &;quote whores&; are quite promiscuous in who they talk to, and often they&;re promoting a book, their brokerage if they&;re a stock analyst, etc. Prof. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University is considered the king of media quotes: from 2000-2002, he was quoted 972 times in articles about popular culture.  One poster calls it &;&;dropping the Thompson bomb&;- something you did when you needed someone else to say the things you were thinking. &; At the Enquirer, we had a group we&;d call &;trained seals.&;  Any kind of quote you wanted, they would give you; the standard &;honorarium&; was $250 per story.  The best were psychologists, usually a clinical assistant professor or higher or a book author. They&;d earn their fee spending an hour with you on the phone, as you pushed them to explain &;how your favorite color reveals your personality.&;

Posted in Apple-Computer, Journalism, Los-Angeles-Times, National-Enquirer, Robert-Thompson, tom-cruise | Leave a Comment &;

Paris Hilton: Media Can&;t GetEnough

June 12, 2007

Early in my journalistic career, I spent five years writing for the National Enquirer.  People asked how I could live with myself, instead of writing for a &;real&; newspaper.  I tried to tell them that standards of verification at the Enquirer were just as high as the New York Times.  Indeed, it was not the Enquirer, but the NY Times, that named the alleged victim in the 1991 Patrick Kennedy Smith rape case. So I like to say that the rest of the media has jumped right down into the gutter with the Enquirer.   It started with Presidential candidate Gary Hart being &;outed&; for his extra-marital affair, picked up steam with the orgiastic OJ Simpson coverage, and snowballed to the bottom of the hill with the airtime and precious ink devoted to Paris. Some outlets pretend their Paris coverage is about &;issues&;, such as this LA Times Paris Hilton story (one of three they run each day) how rich and poor are treated in jail, but most just go for the breathless pandering. The NY Times had a front-page story on Paris.  And yes, it was an &;issue&; piece about  &;celebrity justice&;&;a figleaf for their naked ambition covering the woman they so primly call Ms. Hilton.

Donna Rice and Gary Hart on the yacht Monkey Business. 

Posted in Donna-Rice, Gary-Hart, Journalism, National-Enquirer, New-York-Times, O.J.-Simpson, Paris-Hilton | Leave a Comment &;