Archive for the &;tabloid-journalism&; Category
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Parade Plays Softball with QueenLatifah
January 28, 2011
The January 2, 2011 issue of Parade featured a cover story on Queen Latifah, her life as a role model, her hosting the People&;s Choice Awards and of course a plug for her cosmetics line. What makes the 7-page (cover plus 6) story remarkable is what&;s not there&;any discussion of her personal life, beyond the vague comment that in 10 years, the 40-year old Queen expects she&;ll have &;a couple of kids under my belt&;&;
Latifah is widely believed to be a lesbian, not even that deep in the closet. She&;s been photographed hugging her reputed long-time girlfriend.
So why didn&;t Parade ask her about her personal life&;the readers would certainly like to know. Was it a ground rule established by Latifah&;s &;camp&;&;no questions about the &;L&; word? Or a cowardly editorial decision by Parade&;not to ask in return for access? Would women stop buying her cosmetics if they thought Latifah was gay?
More importantly, did both underestimate their audience? Americans have shown they can &;embrace&; gay stars like Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John, or gay heroes like Daniel Hernandez. Latifah isn&;t a leading lady with romantic roles &;in danger&; if she comes out (a fear that&;s reputed to keep leading men like John Travolta and Tom Cruise in the closet) so why the fear?
It all reminds me of how the Enquirer and its ilk used to play ball with Rock Hudson, despite its muckraking reputation. For almost 30 years, the tabs, the studio and Hudson&;s people manufactured stories about his &;latest romance&; (with women) to keep the readers happy, no gay revelation that would shatter reader illusions and kill the cash cow.
Everyone played ball&;until AIDS brought out the inconvenient truth.
Tags:Hollywood, National-Enquirer, tabloid-journalism Posted in newspapers, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Joan Rivers isnot 77
June 14, 2010
Last week, according to the local &;paper of record&;, the LA Times, on June 8, &;Joan Rivers turned 77, an age that makes her shudder. After all, for years, the comedian has put a lot of money and effort into trying to look younger.&;
Certainly the latter half of this statement is all too demonstrably true, as Rivers has in her campaign to not become Phyllis Diller became the poster child for repeated plastic surgery. But along with erasing lines, Rivers has erased her birthdate&;and the Times is complicit with this.
For Joan Rivers to be 77, she would have been born in 1933. This would mean she wasn&;t quite 21 when she graduated from Barnard College in NY in May of 1954. This is barely possible, but unlikely, especially as she was a transfer student.
More than 15 years ago, when I was employed by the National Enquirer, I did a &;clip job&; on Rivers, going through printed clips on her at AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills.
According to these aged clips, Joan was actually born in 1931, meaning she is now in her 8oth year, a prospect she no doubt finds far more insufferable than &;turning&; 77 (again).
I have to hand it to her; she&;s worked really hard to get the later date out for years, and short of pulling her birth certificate a la &;Kenyan alien&; Barack Obama, it&;s hard to prove.
Does it matter if a woman shaves a couple of years off her age? Probably not; I know someone who&;s half-seriously attempting to shave 9 years off hers. What&;s not OK is for the Times to just print it. What ever happens to &;If your mother says she loves you, check it out?&;
Tags:Hollywood, Joan-Rivers, LA-Times, National-Enquirer, uncritical-press Posted in Hollywood, Hollywood Follies, Los-Angeles-Times, tabloid-journalism | 3 Comments &;
Elena Kagan: Lesbian Softballer Accordingto Journal?
May 13, 2010
Why did the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) put a photograph from 1993 of Elena Kagan, President Obama&;s Supreme Court nominee, on its cover on May 11? Was it to show her athletic ability? Her &;aw-shucks&; Americanism?
Or was it a gay-baiting smear to firmly tie her to the &;lesbian softball player&; meme for their readers?
Tags:Elena-Kagan, gay-baiting, Rupert-Murdoch, Wall-Street-Journal Posted in Politics, Rupert-Murdoch, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Reporter Self-Censored TigerWoods Story
May 4, 2010
Reporters these days are often accused of being &;stenographers&;. It&;s a dying art but a good analogy; here it means just taking down verbatim what a source and his handlers have to say.
Actual &;reporting&; (the kind of stuff the Enquirer did with John Edwards) doesn&;t come into the picture. The big fear is loss of access&;getting kicked out of the White House press room, the campaign bus, the locker room, the gravy train.
People Magazine reporter Steve Helling is a case (or coward) in point. As the Daily News quotes him, &;Over the years, I had heard rumors of Tiger&;s partying &; drunken nights at the clubs, dirty dancing with other women, phone numbers slipped to pretty blonds &; but I didn&;t follow up on the tips,&; the, er, reporter admits&;Helling didn&;t want to be cut off from the golden golfer. &;Negative coverage of Tiger &; or even positive coverage that wasn&;t approved and micromanaged &; would often result in swift, permanent excommunication from the Tiger Woods camp,&; he writes. &;It was in everyone&;s best interest to sweep the rumors under the rug.&;
But don&;t feel too bad for Helling&;he got to cash in with a new book on Tiger and his skanks. Just another example of why they call it &;content&; and page view bait now, instead of news.
Tags:death-of-journalism, John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, People-Magazine, Tiger-Woods Posted in death-of-journalism, death-of-magazines, tabloid-journalism, Uncategorized | 1 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 &;
Why Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods ShouldGolf
December 17, 2009
Bill can take pointers from Tiger on upping his score.
Perhaps Newt Gingrich and Silvio Berlusconi can join them for a foursome. No cheating&;on the course.
Although with Susan MacDougal apparently joining Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, with allegations by Paula Jones, the President is proving quite the player himself.
Tags:Berlusconi, Bill-Clinton, Monica-Lewinsky, Newt-Gingrich, Susan-MacDougal, Tiger-Woods Posted in 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, political-correctness, Politics, Sex and Society, tabloid-journalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Tiger Woods is Happy About OneThing
December 14, 2009
Tiger Woods is no doubt thankful that his father, U.S. Army officer Earl Woods, is not around to see and sound off on what a mess he&;s made of his life. As Earl put it in 2000, &;I wanted to raise a good person.&;
Tags:Earl-Woods, Tiger-Woods Posted in Celebrity-Drunk-Driving-School, celebrity-justice, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Barack, Tiger and AmericanAmnesia
December 3, 2009
The day after: today&;s top story was Tiger Woods&; &;transgressions.&;
Not Obama&;s nationally-televised speech on the surge sending 35,000 men to Afghanistan.
I may have a hard-to-treat case of Internet addiction. But America&;s addiction is to trivial pursuit&;and willful blindness.
The press, too, must get some &;credit&; here. Twenty years ago, I was vilified for working for the Enquirer. Now the rest of the press has jumped down in the gutter with it&;and no one says a word.
Tags:Afghanistan, Barack-Obama, National-Enquirer, Tiger-Woods, trivial-pursuit Posted in tabloid-journalism, uncritical-press | Leave a Comment &;
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