European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 04, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Styling itself As people oriented a by Rick Maze enquirer has reached 5 million circulation. Inquiry into the enquirer a by John Holusha Washington Star panel of psychics actually predicted Farrah Fawcett majors astounding cancer cure top scientists said it was due to her ride in a ufos i during which she Learned 10 ways to become better that Lead paragraph would t make it in the National enquirer too Complex. But it does have some of the ele ments that have propelled the tabloid from a circulation of about 1 million in the late 1960s to 5 million currently. That puts it near the top for weekly publications and enquirer editors talk confidently of 20 million. They do it the hard Way too Selling it copy by copy at supermarket checkout counters. Subscriptions Are available but not encouraged. As the enquirer itself would put it those circulation gains Are even More astounding coming at a time when Many newspapers Are fighting hard just to hold on to the readers they have. Long gone is the enquirer of old which featured sequential photos of beheading Complete with Roll ing head and blood spurting Corpse and headlines of the i Cut out her heart and stomped on it ilk. Today s enquirer is an amalgam of personality Fea Tures medical developments self help items triumphs against adversity and purported firsthand accounts of unexplained Phenomena. It is strictly people oriented and marked by an uncommon enterprising flair. For the enquirer it was Natu ral to spend a Fortune reuniting an aging Admiral and his 29-year-old russian love rifling through Henry Kissinger s garbage is All in a Day s work. The enquirer is written for no readers. Short slightly gee whizz sentences blend into pablum soft paragraphs. Atypical example if you be been writing to Henry the Fonz Winkler in recent months prepare for Heartbreak because your fan mail will probably go unanswered. With Brazen disregard for the feelings of youngsters All Over the country producers at Abc to and Paramount pictures have can celeb their studio fan mail service for Happy Days and Laverne and if the cancellation of a fan mail service seems almost too trivial to mention enquirer editors say to look at the results. By concentrating solely on Good news and ignoring murders politicians and the balance of payments they persuade those 5 million shoppers to plunk Down their 35 cents each week. We kill so Damn Many stories because they re downbeat enquirer chairman Generoso Pope or. Says. They re Good stories but they re depressing and we just won t run Pope says he won t run a Story unless it will give read ers a Good Iain Calder the tall Young Scot who is no. 2 at the enquirer swivels his chair and picks up a copy of the new York times. He reads a headline out loud " Spain s communists Rebuff soviets and vow to maintain Independence " in a voice heavy with scorn he says now can you imagine mrs. Smith turning to her husband and saying Jimmy Spain s communists have rebuffed the soviets and vowed to maintain their terrific paper the new York times. But it s not going to sell to the average Calder says politically oriented publications and Washington reporters in general Are out of touch with the coun try. Even our own reporters up there get that Way. We have to bring them Back every six months because it s a totally unreal so senators and leaked documents give Way to the stars of the top rated to shows. The Nielsen ratings Are posted prominently in the enquirer s newsroom. Once you drop below a certain Point you drop from the pages of the enquirer. Next to the ratings is a Chart tracking the number of stories of each category appearing in each Issue. The Chart is a tidy summation of the current enquirer formula. There Are 10 categories offbeat crime bloopers and Way out. Rags to riches Good Samaritan. Occult and ufos. Consumer topics. Show business personalities. Other personalities. Medical developments. Psychics. Books. Government waste. That formula just like the sex and Gore formula that preceded it is the instinctive seat of the pants produce of one Man Pope. Pope 50, is an unlikely publishing tycoon. He is a Engineer a graduate of Mit. What experience he had when he bought the run Down enquirer in 1952came from being around his father s italian Lan Guage paper ii Progresso. The enquirer then was a 17,000-circulation former Hearst relic that limped along on a diet of Racetrack tips wire copy and press agent fluff. Pope bought it for $75,000. Today 160 editors and reporters produce the enquirer i Short slightly gee whizz sentences blend into pablum soft paragraphs/1 in modern offices in Lantana not far from Florida s Gold coast. The paper itself is printed in nearby Pompano Beach and trucked across the the county hundreds of part time employees keep the enquirer Racks stocked and tidy in thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores. This year Pope says the enquirer will have a Gross income of More than$60 million. Asked How he came by the current formula he once explained the Gore approach by saying people seemed to congregate at accidents Pope launched into an explanation that makes it Plain that his approach is pragmatic and not burdened with notions of journalistic duty. There s no simple answer. I suppose what i do the most is study the successful things television other publications whatever it is. And then i try to figure out what it is that makes them sell Pope s pragmatism has kept him in business. The Gore formula topped out at 1 million circulation in the late 1960s. More ominous the traditional newsstand outlets had begun to close at an alarming rate. There was really one one other place to sell and that was the supermarkets Pope says. But supermarkets weren t about to have a head line proclaiming mom uses son s face for Ash tray assaulting shoppers. We made the decision to change the format because of that. It was a do or die situation. We just decided to go after the Broa dest audience we could find. Consciously i guess we went after the Reader s digest with Pope reviewing and approving every Story idea and at least skimming every Story that goes into the newspaper the current pattern developed. The enquirer s Success is generally credited for the emergence of people Magazine. Midnight and Rupert Murdoch s National Star Are imitators. Pope talks proudly about the paper s conversion to rotogravure color printing later this year. This he says will attract prestige National advertisers. Enquirer ads Are currently loaded heavily with such things As mail order Miracle diet cures which postal service officials have said often Border on fraud. Editor Calder complains bitterly that enquirer scoops Are not properly credited by mainstream publications. For example he says it was the enquirer that dug up the fact that Farrah Fawcett majors had some old shop lifting convictions. In enquirer land this is big news. It was splashed across the front Page As " Farrah s Crimi Nal we have this big front Page Story on Farrah and the new York Post picks it up Calder says. But who do the wire services credit the Post even though it was a to tally exclusive the enquirer has tried strenuously to develop a reputation for accuracy in its medical reporting but that reputation does not carry Over into other areas. Since the paper was deeply embarrassed by a mistake Over Walter Cronkite s attitude toward ufos and the disclosure on National television that it ran a faked picture the enquirer has set up a checking department headed by a former time Magazine researcher. Every word of copy has a Dot Over it to prove it s been read and every name and place has a red Check next to it. All interviews Are on tape to verify accuracy. But accuracy like news is somehow different at the enquirer. For example research chief Ruth Annan is asked How do you Check the accuracy of a Story headlined ufos traps Soldier. He be comes 5 Days older in 15 the answer we verify his recollection of the that is the chilean Soldier involved said he went for a ride on a ufos. To add an element of believability the Story carries a footnote saying the tape has been checked out by a psychological stress evaluator. Calder says we won t run a ufos Story we Don t be Ever since it came up from Gore the enquirer has had a mixed reputation in the journalism business. On the one hand it is the Best paying newspaper in the country. Re porters Start at $35,000 annually few . Newspapers pay Over $20,000 and a freelancer can easily make $300 a Story. Moreover there is virtually no limit on what the paper will spend to get a Story. Last year the editorial depart ment spent a Little Over $11 million. But if suddenly there is a Story that s going to Cost a million dollars to do something we feel would help circulation tremendously we spend Generoso Pope or. Has obviously come a Long Way with the enquirer. He s got the largest circulation of any paper in America that s on the Masthead and is gaining in respectability. He wants More. Like the classic publisher of old he wants clout. We re not big enough yet but As we grow Well pull some weight and Start getting things done to prevent what we feel is something that is really going wrong. A Good example is narcotics. I think that it is idiotic that in All these years we Haven t been Able to control say heroin and the hard stuff. The government has t been Able to but i can t believe it can t be done. So we d prod the government to Start doing what they should be doing in the first sunday september 4, 1977 the stars and stripes Page 11
