A Brief History Of: Tabloids!!
By Kate Pickert
When John Edwards admitted what the national Enquirer had been saying for months--that he had had an affair with a campaign videographer--it was only the latest in a string of high-profile scandals broken by the supermarket press. But politicians' foibles weren't always the target of choice for the tabloids. In the 1950s, their pages were splashed with bloody car accidents and gruesome mutilations. Enquirer owner Generoso Pope dialed down the gore in an effort to appeal to housewives in the checkout aisle, replacing it with alien abductions and medical oddities. Celebrity gossip took over by the late 1960s, as the Enquirer and rival Globe feasted on Chappaquiddick, Jackie Kennedy's remarriage and the death of Elvis. (The Enquirer paid a Presley relative to snap a picture of the King in his coffin.) Rupert Murdoch's Star joined in soon after. Weekly World News, billing itself "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper," carried on the mantle of the weird, covering miraculous cancer cures and zombie sightings. "When we inform people, it's usually by accident," admitted its editor.
Tabloid circulation peaked in the 1980s, but the O.J. Simpson trial prompted a rapid--and ironic--reversal of fortune. Broadcast coverage of the spectacle eclipsed anything that could be done in print, setting a template for sensational TV journalism that would drive the tabs' circulation down 30% by the mid-'90s.
Celebrity print media has bounced back in recent years, thanks to Britney and Paris, although mostly in the glossy magazine format that Star switched to in 2004. And as it is with most papers, the Internet is impinging on tabloids' turf. The new medium has already claimed Weekly World News, which folded in 2007--but readers looking for the latest on the ALIEN BABY LOVE CHILD can still find it online.