What The Enquirer Can Teach You About Good Journalism
Moe · 08/12/08 11:07AMReading about reading about National Enquirer founder Generoso "Gene" Pope Jr. in today's Wall Street Journal, it's hard not to wonder, how come MIT-educated CIA operatives don't start trashy tabloid publications anymore? And is that related to that other salient question, how come kids named "Generoso" don't seem to come through Horace Mann anymore? (The blanket answer to all this is that people just don't know how to have fun anymore, or else the progeny of Russia and China's mafiosos would have run DNA tests on Andrew Young's chewing gum by now, but that's another story.) Anyway, in a month that has seen so much news production "Made In China" so to speak we'd like to take a moment to appreciate the month's leading supplier of original domestic, vertically integrated, by us-for American newstrash, the National Enquirer, for some of the great techniques and philosophies of news gathering Gene brought to American publishing.1. Inculcate reporters in "When In Rome" philosophy of reporting: