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How the National Enquirer Conquered the Media
Unknown publisher changed the rules of how media works; National Enquirer model shapes how more Americans get their news. The Godfather of Tabloid: Generoso Pope and the National Enquirer by Jack Vitek. ISBN: 978-0-8131-2503-9
by Vic Chapman
The recent tempest in a teacup over Sarah Palin’s picture on the cover of Newsweek set off a storm of protest from people who thought the image demeaned the former Governor of Alaska and was “sexist”—even though the same image appeared on the cover of a runner’s magazine. Conservatives everywhere screamed blue murder at Newsweek’s lack of class and confusion of “context.” One imbecile blogger likened Palin’s photo to treason against the United States—or at least the Republican Party, which for some is the same thing.
The two-bit hoopla is the echo of one man’s influence on media in the US for better and for worse. Gennaro Pope Jr., was the founder and publisher of National Enquirer—one of the most successful magazines in US history. The Godfather of Tabloid is a apologia of sorts by one of the National Enquirer’s long time editors and describes much—though by no means all—of the workings of the National Enquirer, Pope and the publishing powerhouse he created.
Gene Pope was the son of Italian immigrants who got into publishing in the 20's with a newspaper called Il Progresso. Pope’s family was connected of course and his father was eyeball deep in the politics and criminal underworld of the day. Pope grew up in a milieu of polticians, bosses and newsies and eventually took over an ailing paper and re-made it into a unique and ultimately game-changing publication with a paid circulation of some 6 million weekly copies. This was done with borrowed money, lots of sweat and iron nerve, which gets lots of detail in Vitek’s book. Pope grew the National Enquirer into a weekly that focused on guts, gore and crime; then as now, a surefire way to make money in the news business. Eventually, Pope stole the idea of placing his paper in supermarket racks and the phenomenon was born—an entertainment/news hybrid that didn’t take anything too seriously, and approached the public from its belly up, feeding people a bizarre mix of what "professional" journalists would call "crap" even when those same “pros” wrote for the National Enquirer anonymously; double dipping their own bylines at the Washington Post, New York Times or Chicago Tribune.
Author Vitek explains that the National Enquirer is the Yin to the mainstream media Yang; its success was based on an inversion of American media standards that used imported British reporters who had trained on the job to get stories using methods that US journalism schools and their professional products abhorred. But the Brits under Pope got the goods more often than not and as time went on, they scooped the dailies with stories and photos that left the more respectable competition scratching their heads and re-thinking their approach.
The National Enquirer once sent a reporter to dig through Henry Kissinger’s trash. The newsie found a trove of information concerning critical political issues of the day that other news organizations would have killed for. Pope’s paper got the photo of Elvis in his coffin—and a three million copy spike in paid circulation. They treated the stars as the commodities they are, too; Pope had no trouble exploiting those who made their living off peddling their fake images to the masses; as Vitek describes, the National Enquirer was sometimes the only paper that told anything like the truth about this segment of society. Along the way, the profits kept growing, readership went up even as many people belittled the rag and refused to admit they read it. As Vitek points out, National Enquirer dealt with the abject—and the abject can be a pretty interesting place sometimes, too.
All of this madness was orchestrated by Pope, who Vitek paints as a closed off, hard-nosed bully with a Stalineque management style who used up men and resources as fast as he could get them. Pope hired people at very high salaries and delighted in firing them quickly. This made for a round robin of talent that soon made its presence felt elsewhere in the media world and whose standards later influenced media’s take on the news, sometimes to the pro’s dismay.
Climbing profits are hard to ignore. Plane crash victims in color on the cover sell copies; bizarre headlines pique curiosity and make captive readers in checkout lines dig out extra coins to get the paper with the story. Respectability, in the form of gray pages and “safe” quotes from hired media flacks puts readers to sleep while dressing a reporter in a priest’s costume to attend a crooner’s very Catholic funeral gets a front page scoop on the competition. Over time, editors and publishers everywhere noticed the rise in National Enquirer’s fortunes and the public’s taste for its fare and added some elements of Gene Pope’s stew to their own mix. As the Newsweek cover showed, in America, any publicity is good publicity.
And that’s why Pope is important. Though unheralded, unknown and dismissed when talk turns to “serious” journalism, Pope had a profound affect on the news business. Pope’s National Enquirer was the racy slut who turned heads away from the “proper” girls who play by the Rules in the media biz. Maybe Pope remembered what others forgot: That the only opinion that really counts in the long run is the reader’s. The self-aggrandizing prize hounds, the Pulitzer-chasers or journalists who lick the hands that feed them for recognition and who write stories that will assure them later access to important newsmakers aren’t really on the public’s side when it matters. Pope’s troops at National Enquirer didn’t bother to curry favor with the people they covered; they disguised themselves and pretended they belonged to entourages, they snooped through trash, they dug where there was gold and brought back the goods—even if the ore they wanted to mine was often third rate, they did a real newsman’s job much of the time. And the rest of the time, they entertained the public.
They also paved the way for current crop of reality TV, too. Though Pope and the National Enquirer didn’t jump on the bandwagon, many former National Enquirer people did. Robin Leach was one of them; so was an editor who flamed badly when she promoted a book by OJ Simpson that bragged of how he would have done it if he’d done it. Reality shows, cable infotainment and raunch weren’t premiered by the tabloid, but they showed others that there’s an appetite for it and some serious money to be made, too. Over time, even lowbrow news organizations like Fox—which used more than a few former tabloid hands—comes up with a winner of a story that leaves the grand bel dames of media gasping for breath with indignation at the upstarts. Media gets ever more blurry in the shakeout between the good, bad and just plain useless, and if it takes a Secretary of Defense to stick up for local “liberal” media in the face of Al Jazeera’s war reportage, it just shows how loose the standards really are, and how skewed the news business is.
One element that Vitek forgets in his very readable book is that the National Enquirer was one of the only successfully targeted media following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to the Florida offices of the paper and killed a photo editor; the building remains sealed to this day. Vitek does not explore this and his book is the poorer for it. Someone had enough of a beef with the oddball, disrespected National Enquirer to try to murder its staff. What the tabloid did to gain this notoriety is a mystery to this day. By this time, Pope had already died and his newspaper was in the hands of a messy estate battle. Had he lived, he doubtless would have gone after those who attacked him and would have likely taken great pride in finding whodunit. As Pope used to say, Prize-winners don’t sell newspapers, and most of them aren’t worth a damn, anyway. And for tabloids, there are no prizes. Perhaps the attack on the National Enquirer was as close to a prize as a tabloid could hope to get.
Vitek’s book is a worthy read for anyone interested in the news business or in media, generally, and does a lot to pop the pretensions of those who want to pretend that even great reporting is a “profession”. It isn’t. “Journalism” may have something to do with journals, but reporting is a newspaper’s stock in trade and good reporters don’t waste time interviewing each other or merely lapping up what some corporate or government flunky wants the public to know. For all its many faults, the National Enquirer got the goods on the targets it focused on and the readers paid it their highest compliment by buying every issue religiously and making tha National Enquirer very, very rich. In a time of declining circulation, ad revenue and reader interest in gray pages with black type, Pope’s model ought to make a comeback before it’s too late for newspapers everywhere.
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