JOSSIP REPORTS — Yesterday we reported American Media's CEO David Pecker — owner of such things called Star, The National Enquirer, and The Globe — was sending out company-wide memos encouraging his employees to write into Congress on behalf of an automotive bailout bill to save the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, and GM) from financial bankruptcy.
Which is a great sentiment, except according to a tipster, Pecker has never owned an American car in his life: "Bentleys? Yes. Porsches? Yes. BMWs? Definitely. But he has never, to my knowledge, ever sat behind the wheel of an American automobile."
So why is Pecker so gung-ho about saving Detroit? CONTINUED »
Sure the magazine industry has a big Going Out of Business sign on the front door, but they're not the only ones. AMI Chief David Pecker wants all his employees to know how much the automotive industry is tanking as well. So maybe if The National Enquirer could throw in a couple Honda references next to their speculation about Cindy McCain's lover, that would be great.
So The National Enquirer has a huge scoop about Skeletor Cindy McCain kissing a guy who is not a billion years old so is clearly not her husband, John McCain. Except the picture they use could be any grandma in a ponytail, so we can't immediately assume it's true.
Unfortunately, since even a broken National Enquirer is right twice a year, we can't immediately assume it's not, either.
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The triple murder tragedy of Jennifer Hudson's family wasn't going to be ignored by the celebrity weeklies. Sadly, multiple deaths are what it takes to get a black girl on the cover of a tabloid. The editors of each weekly, then, had to consider how the competition was going to play the game. Only People and Us gave Hudson A1 treatment, while every other magazine at least included her in a sidebar or footer.
Life & Style and OK! ended up with the same photo. Only the Globe went with a picture of Jennifer with her mouth closed — because nothing says tragedy like eyes staring into the horizon and a mouth agape.
And the honor of Going Full Exploitative goes to, not surprisingly: CONTINUED »
Maer Roshan is understandably bitter. The one man who still believes there is a future for print and snark — together — has seen his baby Radar get shuttered, for the third time, by investors unwilling to hold out long enough to see red ink turn black. But rather than just lock out the staff (which they did) and fire everyone at once (that also happened), Radar overseers Ron Burkle and Yusaf Jackson quickly sold the website RadarOnline.com to American Media, the proprietors behind elementary school reading Star and the National Enquirer. If you've visited the website since, you'll quickly surmise you're not pageviewing through the same homepage that Roshan spit out. Under Enquirer editor David Perel, RadarOnline.com has been, well, Enquirer-ized, with trashy headlines and minutiae for stories. "It’s not the Web site I put out," Roshan tells the Observer. Which leads us to believe: Roshan would've been much happier if Burkle and Jackson just pulled the plug on the whole brand, rather than sell its scraps for pennies on the dollar to freakin' AMI.
Ron Burkle, the not-so-secret secret financier of the now-defunct Radar, is most famous for his BFF'ness with the Clintons. So his panties would naturally be in a twist after reading The National Enquirer's constant smears of Bill Clinton and his "secret orgies."
His counter-attack: sending the snark brigade at Radar after AMI's scent, and specifically after David Pecker, the chief of AMI (which owns National Enquirer, along with Star magazine). Ooh, AMI is running out of money!
So how come Pecker and Co. were able to buy Radar's online domain, now that Maer Roshan has run the magazine into the ground? And is it good business sense or just sweet, sweet revenge?
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Semi-retired gossip queen Bonnie Fuller often takes to the Huffington Post to critique famous women and lady politicos abusing their power. It's often her thesis that famous women bring negativity upon themselves, and it is not the fault of our gossip-y culture nor our incessant need to know every bit of personal minutiae that is the downfall of American culture.
Fuller, you'll recall, was until recently the editorial director of American Media, which published not only Star, but John Edwards' favorite publication The National Enquirer. And its editor, David Perel, now finds himself pulling a Fuller — taking not to HuffPo, but to the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, where he, too, defends his profession.
It's been a long time coming. His paper has been attacked by the left (for reporting John Edwards' affair) and the right (for pushing Sarah Palin scandals) and the fourth estate (for not having journalistic standards … and beating them to the Edwards story, which they opted to ignore). But Perel takes it in stride, pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of it all: The private lives of political types should be off-limits, the argument goes, until it's the opponent's personal matters that become scandalous. CONTINUED »
Once upon a time, you would open a magazine like OK! or Cosmo and see an article that ended with the magazine's website address, ostensibly so readers could find more information about the subject. "More information" usually just meant extraneous lists or irrelevant facts, but more importantly, tons of ads and pop-ups that brought in extra ad revenue.
Well, that was before the era of plummeting newsstand sales, falling at a rate that makes Jann Wenner stay up at night counting solid gold sheep. Now that most celebrity news of the "breaking" variety is fed to the public through blogs and websites, the gossip-mongering print industry fights to keep their newest issues moving off the shelves. Thus, the tried and tired gimmick of offering only glimpses of stories online, with the rest found exclusively in the print edition. Good tactic sure, but it's too bad the pitch will help Sarah Palin/John McCain get elected: CONTINUED »
(Click to enlarge image of Sarah Palin during happier, poorer times)
Weren't you just thinking the other day how this Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol's pregnancy scandal was totally to September what John Edwards and Rielle Hunter's love-baby was to August?
Too bad, it's not. There is a so, so much salaciously better rumor about the former beauty queen and her sexcapades that is going down.
The National Enquirer wants any fans of the Edwards/Hunter and Palin scandals to please step forward, because do they have a scoop for you: CONTINUED »
Sure, American Media Inc. may be carrying more than a half bil in debt, but at like we said, the National Enquirer is one bright spot. Though having seemingly abandoned the John Edwards love child scandal for now, the Enquirer did pick up an 11 percent bump in newsstand sales. Though, framed another way: Only an 11 percent hike?
"In a last ditch effort to save his company, American Media CEO David Pecker late last night quietly launched a cash tender offer to buy out holders of $570 million in debt and refinance the tabloid publisher," Peter Lauria reports. For some bizarre reason, this isn't being described as a last ditch effort to save his job. Whether gun-toting Pecker is to blame, or it's the print industry or the credit crunch, the man has overseen the perilous downfall of AMI. The only bright spot on its ledgers these days in the National Enquirer's free publicity, but now that everyone has had their fill of John Edwards, and he's been shunned from the DNC and no cable news channel will even touch the story, even that wonder well is running dry. And yet Pecker continues to arrive at AMI's offices every morning, with job security.
David Perel, editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, sung his victory song over at Huffington Post yesterday. And, well, he should: His John Edwards coup at the National Enquirer left the MSM hanging because of their hang-ups in writing up a scandal. (A liberal scandal, at that.)
Who would have thought, then, that it'd be the cynical bloggers rallying behind Perel. But it does make a twisted sort of logic — the Internet, filled with its salacious half-truths and Photoshopped celebrity obsessions, bears more of a resemblance to NE than more reputable publications.
So here's Perel getting smug: CONTINUED »
'John Edwards’ ex-lover, Rielle Hunter, may have been sold out again — by one of her sisters! Somehow, the National Enquirer has managed to produce a new, very clear picture of Hunter with baby daughter Frances Quinn. The picture could not be better. So the question is, how did the supermarket tabloid get it? The answer is, it was taken by one of Hunter’s two sisters, either Roxanne or Melissa. Roxanne, who lives in North Carolina, already has been identified as a source for previous Enquirer stories. She and Rielle had not spoken for 15 years prior to the Edwards scandal. Melissa, on the other hand, has so far been regarded as the loyal sister, who would never sell out Rielle for money. Nevertheless, one of them took the picture and e-mailed it to the other. It’s now on the cover of the Enquirer, presumably without Rielle’s blessing.' [Fox 411]
The suddenly reliable (but only when John Edwards is involved) National Enquirer is still on the hunt for more proof that the tabloid was correct in its reporting, although nobody is really arguing otherwise. This time around the mag reveals even more details about John and his alleged mistress, Rielle Hunter — the latter of whom was flown on a $50,000 private jet to the Virgin Islands the day before Edwards' Nightline interview. This vacation was, of course, paid for by John's pals.
A funny thing happened on the way to ruining John Edwards reputation: The National Enquirer graduated from slippery checkout aisle gossip trash into a bonafide news source. Sure, the rag has broken legitimate news before — O.J. Simpson, and just recently, Patrick Swayze — but only since its John Edwards coup, where it forced the ex-senator and VP possibility into admitting an affair, has it attracted the respect of the mainstream media. Okay, maybe not respect, but at least the attention. CONTINUED »
American Media Inc. debt overseer David Pecker has a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Florida. This will be worthwhile should Mr. Pecker, whose company publishes the National Enquirer, ever run into John Edwards on a steamy Miami night. [WoD]
Sharon Waxman, who is about to start her own Hollywood gossip enterprise, on why the John Edwards scandal still has any secrets left to be told: "My guess is that there is a simple reason why the mainstream media is unable to confirm the Edwards-Hunter affair during these past weeks. Because very few people knew what had been going on. Edwards’ staff didn’t know. Elizabeth Edwards didn’t know. The group may have been as small as three: Edwards, Hunter and her pal Bob McGovern." There's that, and also: "These past weeks,' nobody but the National Enquirer has been asking these questions. And you know what happens when some other folks do start asking questions? This little thing called answers. Strike two, Waxman.
National Enquirer exec editor Barry Levine: 'We have exclusive photographic evidence, pictures, videos, hard proof to further incriminate Edwards. He doesn't at this point know what we have, which is why I'm asking that we don't reveal too much yet. And which we will use unless and until he acknowledges paternity. [...] Although Edwards has this loyalist Andrew Young trying to claim it's really his baby in order to take the heat off Edwards, we know that's false. Young brought his wife and children to visit this lady Rielle Hunter. Now, nobody brings his wife and kids to have a nice social meeting with his mistress. It's ridiculous. [...] We're in this for the long haul. We're sitting on very exclusive material. Like a reporter monitoring a room they were in from 9:45 p.m. to 2:45 a.m. We had the big OJ stories, we broke the Jesse Jackson lovechild story, we unearthed the Clinton girlfriend stories. We'll stay on this one forever.' [Cindy]
Since blogs are now the only source of politics-related information that you can rely on, let us introduce you to the goods on John Edwards' baby mama Rielle Hunter's now defunct blog/website/crazy town "Being is Free."
Oh wait, you can't, because the site seems to have not only been shutdown, but has some sort of internet perma-block that prevents caching. Which you wouldn't expect from a website designed in 1999. (Click to enlarge) CONTINUED »
David Perel, the National Enquirer editor whose made it his personal newsstand mission to bring down John Edwards, has insisted he won't let anybody else, especially the mainstream media, dictate how and when his reports of the ex-senator's love scandal come out. Which is why he waited until yesterday to release the first photo of Edwards and his love child Frances Quinn Hunter.
This is sort of an empty promise, since the MSM has basically left the story alone, meaning there's nobody trying to beat the Enquirer's scoops. There's one exception though: the Raleigh News & Observer.
They've been trying to ask Edwards about the scandal, with little success. But that's not keeping them from advancing their own side of things; the paper hits today with news that Edwards better sort out his scandal if he expects to keep a date with the Democratic National Committee, whose convention is just two weeks away.
Oh, speaking of the DNC? Seems that's the one thing that Perel will let dictate his news breaking. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
