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.

The 1.2 million circ Enquirer is getting treatment from both CBS News and the New York Times, where David Carr eats his words about a 2005 column reporting editor David Perel's removal when Bonnie Fuller arrived from Us Weekly to take charge and a roster of British imports replaced the Florida reporting squad. (Carr also notes that, if debt-laden parent American Media is forced to sell its assets, the Enquirer could haul in some decent change.)

And CBS, which is certain to mention the Enquirer does get things wrong — "just last week there was news of a settlement with a woman falsely reported as having a son fathered by Senator Ted Kennedy" — is piling on the accolades for breaking stories like Jesse Jackson's illigitimate son and tanking Gary Hart's presidential ambitions by running a photograph of him with a woman who wasn't his wife.

The irony here, of course, is that both CBS News and the New York Times refused to touch the Edwards story in the many months the Enquirer reported on it all by its lonesome. But now that Perel's team broke the biggest political scandal of the year? It's time for some superlatives.