Mud and the Mainstream

In the lobby of the National Enquirer, there are no Pulitzer Prizes on the wall. In fact, there are few clues that the building, ringed by an overgrown tangle of palm trees, bougainvillaea and palmettos, houses a major publishing empire. A few public service awards dot the walls; a cheery receptionist answers the phone, "National Enquirer -- celebrity or noncelebrity?" Two journalists from Weekly World News, a sister publication that is chock-full of extra-terrestrials, enter the building bantering about their assignments. "What's your story about?" asks one. "True-life angel encounters," the other replies. "Oh," says the first, "you can do that from clips."

The nature of the National Enquirer, its renegade spirit as well as its quirky charm, creep up on one slowly. The Enquirer headquarters -- which also houses Country Weekly, Soap Opera Magazine, and the Weekly World News -- looks like a small school. Tucked away on a quiet residential street in Lantana, Florida, a sleepy blue-collar town, and flanked by a baseball field and a water tower, the modest complex is easy to miss. But from inside, the Enquirer can seem as otherworldly as the dreamy pastel architecture of Lantana, a cult-like enterprise that produces one of the most widely read publications in America.

With an enviable circulation that approaches 3.5 million copies a week, the Enquirer is still a pariah publication. Doubt it? Imagine dropping a copy on the table at a business meeting or taking the latest issue out of your briefcase on the Washington shuttle. But increasingly in recent years, the Enquirer has won grudging respect from its mainstream rivals for the thoroughness and accuracy, if not always the taste and fairness, of its coverage of the Enquirer's kind of hard-news story. And increasingly, the Enquirer's kind has become the mainstream's kind -- Gary Hart, William Kennedy Smith and the woman who accused him of rape, Gennifer Flowers, Michael Jackson, Tonya Harding (see sidebar, page 38), and most spectacularly, O.J. Simpson. Supermarket tabloids and their broadcast cousins, David Broder wrote scathingly in The Washington Post last year, "have demonstrated the capacity to 'launch' stories -- often of the sleaziest kind -- that the mainstream press feels it necessary to follow." The white Bronco blazed a trail where high culture and low culture meet, and the Enquirer is thriving in that atmosphere, thank you very much.

It didn't hurt that the Simpson story fell smack in the middle of the Enquirer source network. The Enquirer was one of the few publications in the United States to cover O.J.'s marital problems, particularly his 1989 arrest for wife-beating. The now famous 911 phone call by Nicole may be a surprise to the rest of the reading public, but to Enquirer readers who picked up the February 21, 1989, issue, it is old news. When the murders were discovered in Brentwood last June, the Enquirer's reporters arrived on the scene before the coroner. Since then, the Enquirer has had as many as twenty reporters on the story at a time. By the time the Simpson trial started in January, twenty-four of the Enquirer's last thirty-two covers had featured the case, from every possible angle: o.j finally cracks; i saw o.j. at murder scene; nicole's secret life. The publication had also put forth its purest tabloid prose in service of the story: "The night ended with the bubbly blonde beauty dead in a river of blood on her front doorstep -- her throat slashed, her body bludgeoned, her face battered and bruised."

 As the trial began, the biggest secret in the Los Angeles County Court-house wasn't O.J.'s guilt or innocence, but the fact that so many reporters were reading the National Enquirer religiously. As Carl Lavin, an editor sent to Los Angeles to coordinate The New York Times's coverage, wrote in his paper's house organ, "I knew this was a different sort of story when I found myself reading the National Enquirer -- and assigning reporters to chase leads from it." But for the public, that didn't become clear until David Margolick, covering the trial for the Times, twice cited the Enquirer's story saying that Simpson had been overheard yelling, "I did it!" during a confessional jailhouse meeting with his minister and friend, Roosevelt Grier. A sheriff's deputy had been barred from using the quoted words in his testimony about the exchange. Margolick did use them, and despite his unquestioned reputation as an ace legal correspondent, a major debate arose among journalism pundits, from the pages of The Washington Post to The Today Show. "To cite the National Enquirer as his only source is, I think, dead wrong," declared Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, in a discussion on CNN's Crossfire.

 Margolick stuck to his guns. "I didn't do it lightly, and I thought I'd be criticized for it," he told The Washington Post. "It was from a source [the Enquirer] that had proven itself reliable in the Simpson case, and I'd be doing my readers a disservice if I didn't mention it." A Times article on the hullabaloo quoted the paper's executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, in defense of Margolick on the ground of relevance: "He was trying to make plain to readers what was going on in the courtroom." (The Times, Lelyveld added, was "not subcontracting our editorial judgment in the Simpson case to a supermarket tabloid.") In the same article, Jon Katz, a media critic who writes for New York and Wired magazines, was quoted as saying the Enquirer's coverage of the Simpson case was better than many of its competitors' and that the Times would have been guilty of "head-in-the-sand myopia" not to have cited the tabloid.

In the Lantana newsroom, where praise from fellow journalists has been rare, there's a polite gratitude to Margolick, but a surprising lack of interest. After all, if Enquirer employees depended on praise from the mainstream press, they would have starved long ago. Those who think about it tend to see it as their due. "When the mainstream media are working alongside of us, they see these stories are accurate," says Enquirer editor-in-chief Iain Calder in his soft Scottish burr. Since the Margolick episode, the press has begun to train its lights on the Enquirer itself, with as many as four TV crews a day seeking admission to the newsroom. But the Enquirer's staff still has a wariness of the rest of the media, born of its geographic isolation from the media capitals and years of rejection. Says Valerie Virga, the photo editor, "I used to get a lot of this," making a cross with her fingers, "Get thee behind me, tabloid person." But times are different. "We haven't changed. The rest of the press has changed. They're becoming more tabloid."

A melding of mainstream culture and Enquirer culture has been in the cards ever since the Enquirer helped end Gary Hart's political career by publishing a photo of a beaming (and married) Hart with Donna Rice perched on his knee. "The National Enquirer earned its spurs with the Gary Hart story," says Everette Dennis, executive director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. "It established them in a new way. The fact that it happened made it more acceptable for mainstream publications to look at the National Enquirer as a lead for news." The Gary Hart cover now hangs proudly on a wall in Lantana, right next to a cover of Elvis lying in his open copper coffin at Graceland. The Elvis cover occupies a special place in Enquirer hearts; it was the top issue of all time, selling a staggering six and a half million copies.

 The gulf between the Enquirer and the mainstream press can't be detected by a look at the newsroom, which resembles that of any good-size newspaper. Reporters hunch over their IBM and Mac terminals, their desks buried under stacks of newspapers. As much as the newsroom may look like theirs, though, many in the mainstream press dismiss the National Enquirer as being without journalistic ethics. But it's not a lack of ethics, Enquirer people say, it's different ethics, to which they profess stubborn devotion. High among the principles in the Enquirer newsroom is tenacity. Staff members are used to getting doors slammed in their faces. "We'll put five people on the story and knock on a thousand doors," says editor-in-chief Calder proudly. "We're willing to go to greater lengths." Sometimes it's for stories that hardly seem worth it; ask, and you'll hear tales of tracking Roseanne and her amorous bodyguard through Europe. But the staff's drive is legendary. "If there's a big story, we jump all over it, " says editor John Cathcart. "We'll use Lear jets, and twenty reporters hiding in the bushes. We've even talked about using submarines."

Another Enquirer ethos is a focus on the reader, to a degree unusual in newsrooms. One hears no scorn for the Kmart and Wal-Mart shoppers who have contributed to the paper's success; any disdain is saved for the non-paying browser who reads the latest issue in the checkout line. The attitude is best summed up by a handmade sign in the newsroom that reads: it's the reader, stupid. It is a devotion that is reciprocated by the Enquirer's readers. They send the publication about a million letters a year, so many that the Enquirer has been given its own zip code -- 33464. Because the Enquirer sells few subscriptions -- there are only 500,000 subscribers -- there is a sense on the staff that it constantly has to reinvent the wheel. "This is almost the purest form of democracy," says Calder. "Every single week, people are voting with their pocketbooks." That explains the Enquirer's story selection process, and why, for example, it bothered with a Beltway type like Gary Hart. "It wasn't a political story," says Calder. "He went over the line." The line of impropriety? No, Calder answers. "The line where fifty percent of the population wants to read about someone. A critical mass." The hottest, the newest, the trendy people who obsess mainstream publications mean little to the Enquirer. "We don't give a fuck if you're up and coming," explains one veteran staff member helpfully. "We care about you if you're there."

But it is another ethos at the National Enquirer -- its willingness to pay for stories -- that most perpetuates its ostracism from mainstream journalism. In the Simpson case, for example, the paper paid JosŽ Camacho and his cutlery-store bosses $12,500 for their story of selling O.J. a knife, and Nicole's maid $18,000 for her description of O.J.'s abuse of Nicole. One result is a new California law barring witnesses and jurors in criminal cases from selling their stories before a case is ended. Despite the public criticism, Enquirer people stand by their practice, which is deeply embedded in the Enquirer psyche. "We check our stories out whether we pay or not," says Calder. "You're buying the exclusivity."

 David Perel, the editor in charge of the paper's O.J. coverage, agrees. "Money is a very powerful tool that we use to get to the truth," he says. Learning how to price a story is part of one's journalistic repertoire. "You get a sense of what a story is worth when you've been here awhile."

 The sense of free-flowing dollars is everywhere in the Enquirer newsroom. When asked how much he pays for items for his column, Mike Walker, the Enquirer's longtime gossip columnist, answers, "How high is up?" The usual range, he says, is $100 to $400 an item. He says of would-be sources, "When I get a call -- and I get them every day -- once I decide they really have something, I ask, 'Why are you telling me this story?' When they say money, I get a little warm glow. Greed is a very pervasive and very understandable part of human nature. It is much easier to deal with a greedy person than someone who is motivated by hate or revenge."

 Such talk makes most mainstream journalists furious. Marvin Kalb calls the Enquirer's practice of paying for stories "part of the prostitution of American journalism." He is particularly offended by the notion that the tabloid is paying for exclusives, not for stories. "I was raised in an era where an exclusive was the result of the legwork you did to get special information," he says. "This kind of exclusive is simply a reflection of the fatness of your wallet." But there are defenders of the practice outside of the Lantana newsroom. John Tierney, a New York Times reporter, wrote in the Times magazine: "I don't believe that paying sources is unethical, as long as it's disclosed to the reader; in some cases I think it makes for better journalism. It gives a fair share of the profits to sources who spend time and take risks. It might promote some fictional tales, but it would also elicit stories that otherwise wouldn't be told, from the many people who now see no good reason to talk to a reporter." The Times's policy is not to pay for information; the Enquirer's is to pay when necessary.

There's money, money everywhere at the Enquirer, including a $16 million annual editorial budget. Experienced reporters earn from $55,000 to almost $100,000. Editor-in-chief Calder, fifty-six, who has been working as a journalist since he graduated from high school in Scotland, made millions when the tabloid was sold to its present owner, McFadden Holdings, for $412.5 million in 1989 after the death of the Enquirer's legendary founder, Generoso Pope Jr. Pope bought the paper in 1952 for $75,000, and turned it from a New York newspaper into a successful national tabloid, with Calder's help in the later years.

The Enquirer also shells out big money for photographs. "No one can ever beat us," boasts Virga, the photo editor. "We've sent out checks from $50 to $50,000 and more from time to time. We're bidding against Time and Newsweek and People." If the story warrants it, the tabloid spares no expense; at Elizabeth Taylor's last wedding, the Enquirer had half a dozen photographers and three helicopters in motion. Are there limits to what they'll do for a good photo? "I wouldn't break into someone's hospital room," says Virga. "Despite what people feel, we don't invade privacy."

Eddie Murphy and others might take issue with that claim. The Enquirer got photos of Murphy's wedding by sending in photographers dressed as waiters. Such feats take "small cameras, big balls," Virga says with a sly smile, adding, "That counts for a lot in this business." Getting pictures of O.J. Simpson has been easier. At one point, says Virga, "we were getting thirty to fifty calls a day" from people saying, " 'I photographed O.J. playing football.' It was insane. It's like you're the FBI. You have to screen them." But like most of her colleagues, Virga, who came to the publication almost eighteen years ago bearing an English degree from Boston College, wouldn't give up the chase for anything. "I can't imagine working somewhere where everyone is cooperative, like Vanity Fair. What do they do
 all day?"

If anyone has benefited from the growing cachet of the Enquirer, it is Mike Walker. The silver-haired gossip columnist is a one-man industry; he is a regular guest on the Geraldo show and the E! Channel and has his own syndicated radio show on the Westwood One Network. He is also the co-author of Faye Resnick's sizzling best-selling memoir, Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted.

 "We are broadcasting from atop Mount Gossip," he coos into his microphone in his Lantana radio studio. "Let's get a little frothier. You know that I like to get lightweight." Walker is the voice of gossip: unvarnished, unapologetic, seductive. What others just play at, he consummates. Between radio segments, he works the phone. Talking with a colleague, he names a well-known actress. "I smell facelift," he smirks.

A pugnacious defender of his tabloid craft, Walker is finally getting a little respect. On his desk is an invitation to a conference on the future of biography at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California at Berkeley, to appear alongside the New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and the biographer Patricia Bosworth, among others. But he can't shake his sense of grievance about the mainstream press. "I'm a profitmonger," he proclaims. "I'm a journalist. I sell and trade information, and any journalist who doesn't think that's what he does is kidding himself." A high-school dropout from Plymouth, Massachusetts, whose career before the Enquirer was, by his own account, a mix of wire services, newspapers, police reporting, and managing rock and roll bands in Europe, Walker has been at the paper since 1971. As he tells his radio audience, "I used to be a serious journalist. Then I saw the light."

It was an item written by Walker that got the Enquirer into its most famous debacle. A Los Angeles jury awarded the actress Carol Burnett a $1.6 million verdict in 1981 after the tabloid implied that Burnett had made a drunken scene in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. Even though the verdict was later halved, it sent a chill through the whole publishing world because of its size. What was the impact of the Carol Burnett verdict on the tabloid? Says a lawyer who once represented the Enquirer, "My opinion before the Burnett decision was that they were very careful. Afterwards, they were a little more careful." Now, a lawyer from the prestigious law firm of Williams & Connolly flies down from Washington weekly to review stories being published that week.

If the Enquirer is edging toward respectability, it is due in large part to younger journalists like general editor David Perel and assistant executive editor Steve Coz, his boss. The two might be considered the Woodward and Bernstein of tabloid journalism for their successful collaboration on the O.J. Simpson case. (As it happens, Perel started his career at The Washington Post, as a makeup editor.) The two editors have clearly brought a drive, energy, and accuracy that the Enquirer hasn't always enjoyed. Unlike Enquirer reporters from an earlier era, who were often European-born Fleet Street veterans, both are American and college-educated. Perel, thirty-five, a dead ringer for Sean Penn, went to school at the University of Maryland and American University. Coz, thirty-seven, the picture of yuppie sophistication in his Ralph Lauren Polo shirt and his tortoise-shell glasses, graduated cum laude from Harvard. Their smarts and hustle would be a credit to any newsroom; still, the two are wedded to the Enquirer life-style, in large part because of what Perel calls "the fun factor." (Coz is also wedded to Valerie Virga, the photo editor, whom he met on the job.)

In the end, the Enquirer is more like mainstream publications than many in journalism think -- but less like a major newspaper than Enquirer journalists like to think. Too many mainstream journalists consider the tabloid's work "cash for trash," as The New Yorker put it in an article last year.

And what will the Enquirer do when the O.J. case is over? Not to worry -- there's always another scandal down the road. Photo editor Virga, for one, has her eye on the Speaker of the House. "I'd love to catch him doing the nasty -- Newt with some little bimbo on his lap." After all, inquiring minds want to know.

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