Zany adventures of a lively girl reporter in Hollywood as she pursues blockbuster stories about the most famous celebrities in the world, for the mightiest tabloid in the world The National Enquirer. It is the first book ever written by an Enquirer veteran, answering in hilarious and fascinating detail the two most-asked questions: Is any of that stuff true?and how do they get that stuff? Author also goes behind the closed doors of the Enquirer's "Keep out!" newsroom to explore what really happens in there. Locations around the world, and with stars from Sinatra to Richard Burton and on down. Very entertaining revelation of what reporters do and go through to get that stuff right from the very famous horse's mouth.
In nearly twenty years at the top of the News of the World, Neville Thurlbeck - chief reporter, news editor and scoop-hunter extraordinaire - served up some of the most famous, memorable and astonishing headlines in the paper's existence. They lit up the world of tabloid journalism and featured names such as David Beckham, Fred and Rose West, Jeffrey Archer and Robin Cook, among many others. Along the way, Thurlbeck was drawn into encounters with Cabinet ministers, rent boys, sports stars, serial killers, drug lords and, on one occasion, a devil-worshipping police officer. He worked with MI5 and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, foiled a murder and gave Gordon Brown a tongue-lashing to remember, all in the name of journalism. Now, in Tabloid Secrets, he reveals for the first time the truth about how he broke the stories that thrilled, excited and shocked the nation, and secured the paper up to fifteen million readers every week. The result is a fascinating, scandalous, swashbuckling insight into some of the biggest and most sensational scoops by Fleet Street's most notorious reporter.
This no-holds-barred account of a husband-and-wife team of tabloid reporters will entertain with its high jinx and shock with its excesses. Lysa Moskowitz-Mateu and David LaFontaine spent one year traveling all over the continent as they chased down headline stories for the Star, the National Enquirer, and the Globe. By their own account, tabloid reporters are the "vermin media," and their outrageous quests for good interviews know no bounds.
“Hollywood's Hottest Couple Exchange Mystery Rings!” “The Truth Behind Screen Beauty's Pregnancy Rumors!” “Song Diva Sneaks Past Airport Security and Lands Behind Bars!” “TV's Favorite Childhood Star Faces Drinking and Drug Charges!” “Teen Beauty Downplays Anorexia Rumors with Hot Dog!” “Hollywood's Favorite Funnyman Has Secret Love Child!” “Couple Goes Head to Head in Custody Battle!” Who writes these stories? Marlise Kast used to. In fact, she was so good at it, at such a young age, she was considered a “tabloid prodigy.” Marlise, the daughter of a minister, grew up in a loving, conservative, slightly sheltered family, and aspired to a career as a respected journalist or television news anchor. She was perhaps the least likely person to become a star reporter for Globe. But, right out of college, with a journalism degree and few job prospects, she became a tabloid writer, playing the high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with some of Hollywood's hottest celebrities. There was almost nothing Marlise wouldn't do to get the story behind the celebrity facade. Dumpster diving and hiding in the bushes were child's play compared to ploys like posing as a drunk to crash one star's wedding or bluffing her way through the L.A. Police Department to confirm the DUI of another celeb's daughter. Using a combination of charm and brains, Marlise convinced co-workers, waiters, bouncers and bartenders to confess the juicy secrets of Hollywood stars. On the red carpet and VIP guest lists, she assumed countless identities, including those of a florist, a tennis player, a mourner, and a bridesmaid.Along the way, though, Marlise continually wondered: was she abandoning her principles in exchange for a shot at celebrity reporting? Torn between her journalistic duties and her moral responsibilities, Marlise tried to ignore the battle with her conscience, telling herself this wasn't a permanent job, just a stepping stone to a more respectable career. Right? This riveting and entertaining memoir is full of her outrageous-but-true tabloid experiences. Marlise's narrative details the behind-the-scenes deals, manipulations, and deceptions used to break the big stories. In an industry where turnover is high, and loyalty low, Marlise survived multiple bosses, a rotating roster of photographers, professional shenanigans, terrifying situations, and comical predicaments, as well as legal threats from some of the celebrities and “personalities” she wrote about. She eventually wrote over 200 articles for the tabloids. Her biggest story, though, is the one she's never told before; how-after a dangerous high-speed chase, a corporate betrayal of her trust, and the doubts that continued to plague her-Marlise came face-to-face with a story her conscience would not allow her to tell. After so many years of lying about who she really was, Marlise had to discover her own truth. As this riveting memoir reveals, her redemption is more honest and personal than any celebrity news she's ever reported.
For over a hundred years, the New York Times has purported to present straight news and hard facts. But, as Bob Kohn shows with absolute clarity, the founders' original vision has been hijacked, and today, instead of straight news, readers are given mere editorial under the pretense of objective journalism. Kohn shows point by point the methods by which the Times' mission has been subverted by the present management-routinely slanting the presentation of the facts in leads, headlines, and placement; utilizing polls, labels, and loaded language to convey particular views, not genuine news; and staffing the newsroom with hacks who manipulate information to further a leftist agenda. Kohn shows how such fraudulence directly corrupts hundreds of news agencies across the world; and by revealing all their methods of manipulation, he teaches readers how to decipher the slants in even the subtlest of cases, providing an entertaining and enlightening lesson in fraud-busting.
A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.
"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." —John le Carré From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and preeminent investigative journalist of our time—a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a decades-long career breaking some of the most impactful stories of the last half-century, from Washington to Vietnam to the Middle East. Seymour Hersh's fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the free world, honors galore, and no small amount of controversy. Now in this memoir he describes what drove him and how he worked as an independent outsider, even at the nation's most prestigious publications. He tells the stories behind the stories—riveting in their own right—as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horrors at Abu Ghraib. There are also illuminating recollections of some of the giants of American politics and journalism: Ben Bradlee, A. M. Rosenthal, David Remnick, and Henry Kissinger among them. This is essential reading on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.
"A gripping, flawlessly researched, and overdue portrait of America’s trailblazing female journalists. Kim Todd has restored these long-forgotten mavericks to their rightful place in American history."—Abbott Kahler, author (as Karen Abbott) of The Ghosts of Eden Park and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy A vivid social history that brings to light the “girl stunt reporters” of the Gilded Age who went undercover to expose corruption and abuse in America, and redefined what it meant to be a woman and a journalist—pioneers whose influence continues to be felt today. In the waning years of the nineteenth century, women journalists across the United States risked reputation and their own safety to expose the hazardous conditions under which many Americans lived and worked. In various disguises, they stole into sewing factories to report on child labor, fainted in the streets to test public hospital treatment, posed as lobbyists to reveal corrupt politicians. Inventive writers whose in-depth narratives made headlines for weeks at a stretch, these “girl stunt reporters” changed laws, helped launch a labor movement, championed women’s rights, and redefined journalism for the modern age. The 1880s and 1890s witnessed a revolution in journalism as publisher titans like Hearst and Pulitzer used weapons of innovation and scandal to battle it out for market share. As they sought new ways to draw readers in, they found their answer in young women flooding into cities to seek their fortunes. When Nellie Bly went undercover into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women and emerged with a scathing indictment of what she found there, the resulting sensation created opportunity for a whole new wave of writers. In a time of few jobs and few rights for women, here was a path to lives of excitement and meaning. After only a decade of headlines and fame, though, these trailblazers faced a vicious public backlash. Accused of practicing “yellow journalism,” their popularity waned until “stunt reporter” became a badge of shame. But their influence on the field of journalism would arc across a century, from the Progressive Era “muckraking” of the 1900s to the personal “New Journalism” of the 1960s and ’70s, to the “immersion journalism” and “creative nonfiction” of today. Bold and unconventional, these writers changed how people would tell stories forever.
Tamara Sim, a ruthlessly ambitious young journalist, is thrilled when she is sent to interview veteran war correspondent Honor Tait. Finally - a chance for Tamara to prove that there's more to her than forged expenses claims and the 'what's in/what's out' column she churns out for her tabloid. But Honor isn't an easy subject; cold and evasive to the point of rudeness, it's almost as if she has something to hide. And when Tamara starts to do some digging (not all of it strictly legal) she makes a discovery which has devastating consequences for them both... In The Spoiler, the former literary editor of the Financial Times and the Guardian offers a first hand glimpse into the world of British journalism.
Anyone who sat in a murderer's old chair in an English public house would die, and soon, said the legend, and a series of sudden deaths was blamed on the cursed seat. Journalist Paul Bannister delved into the story of the Baffling Chair of Death, and became the National Enquirer's chief reporter of the paranormal. As 'Tabloid Man, ' he covered more than spooks and psychics, however. Headline tales about celebrities like Oprah, O.J. and Obama also came from his notebook, and this frank memoir reveals just how the scandal sheets get their sensational stories, as well as revealing the secrets of classic tabloid tales, from getting Elvis' Last Picture to finding the world's tallest Christmas tree.
