Book description
They're hard to miss at grocery stores and newsstands in America-the
colorful, heavily illustrated tabloid newspapers with headlines
promising shocking, unlikely, and sometimes impossible stories within.
Although the papers are now ubiquitous, the supermarket tabloid's origin
can be traced to one man: Generoso Pope Jr., an eccentric, domineering
chain-smoker who died of a heart attack at age sixty-one. In The
Godfather of Tabloid, Jack Vitek explores the life and remarkable career
of Pope and the founding of the most famous tabloid of all- the National
Enquirer. Upon graduating from MIT, Pope worked briefly for the CIA
until he purchased the New York Enquirer with dubious financial help
from mob boss Frank Costello. Working tirelessly and cultivating a mix
of American journalists (some of whom, surprisingly, were Pulitzer prize
winners) and buccaneering Brits from Fleet Street who would do anything
to get a story, Pope changed the name, format, and content of the modest
weekly newspaper until it resembled nothing America had ever seen
before. At its height, the National Enquirer boasted a circulation of
more than five million, equivalent to the numbers of the Hearst
newspaper empire. Pope measured the success of his paper by the mail it
received from readers, and eventually the volume of reader feedback was
such that the post office assigned the Enquirer offices their own zip
code. Pope was skeptical about including too much celebrity coverage in
the tabloid because he thought it wouldn't hold people's interest, and
he shied away from political stories or stances. He wanted the paper to
reflect the middlebrow tastes of America and connect with the widest
possible readership. Pope was a man of contradictions: he would fire
someone for merely disagreeing with him in a meeting (once firing an one
editor in the middle of his birthday party), and yet he spent upwards of
a million dollars a year to bring the world's tallest Christmas tree to
the Enquirer offices in Lantana, Florida, for the enjoyment of the local
citizens. Driven, tyrannical, and ruthless in his pursuit of creating an
empire, Pope changed the look and content of supermarket tabloid media,
and the industry still bears his stamp. Grounded in interviews with many
of Pope's supporters, detractors, and associates, The Godfather of
Tabloid is the first comprehensive biography of the man who created a
genre and changed the world of publishing forever. Jack Vitek is an
associate professor of journalism and English at Edgewood College in
Madison, Wisconsin. For many years, he was a professional journalist
working for numerous publications, including the Washington Daily News,
the Wall Street Journal, and Newsday. He is coauthor of Idol Rock
Hudson: The True Story of an American Film Hero.
