Posted on 03/29/2005 4:39:30 AM PST by BigWaveBetty
Spirits were high in the offices of The National Enquirer in Manhattan last week. A gaggle of British interlopers had taken custody of the tabloid, a SWAT team of Fleet Street meat-eaters brought in to revive the storied but now flagging checkout magazine. Not only was The Enquirer moving its main offices and production facilities to Manhattan from Florida - effectively taking the gossip magazine uptown and mainstream - but even more deliciously the paper also had a cover article suggesting that a Hollywood actor's Super Bowl celebration was a bit more super than most.
Paul Field, the Enquirer's editor and a former associate editor of The Sun, a popular British tabloid, was in particularly fine fettle, even though he was fighting a cold. A stripper and prostitute had told The Enquirer that she spent Super Bowl Sunday last month in the company of the star of a popular television show. The actor, through a representative, has denied the allegations. The Enquirer saved the naughtiest bit from the stripper's account - allegations of drug use - for the issue coming out today, the last one produced in Boca Raton, Fla.
In holding off, the editors took a tactical risk that they would not be scooped. "No, I'm not concerned," Mr. Field said, sitting at a table in his office. "No other publication would touch that story," he said, unlike in Britain, where "there would be other papers all over it."
In order to ensure a steady inventory of articles like the super Super Bowl one that will compel checkout readers to actually buy the paper, Mr. Field hired a slew of British tabloid veterans, including Paul Henderson, the former Mail on Sunday investigations editor, and Steve Dennis, the ex-Daily Mirror reporter who broke the stories about Paul Burrell, ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Someone already suggested 'Fettucini Federline.'
Asparagus is nice, but why not just plain "Broccoli Spears"? That's what Mr. M calls the lovely Britney anyway.
Drat, not Madysyn?
For those interested, coming up in a few minutes on NBC:
Dateline, Deconstructing "The Da Vinci Code".
I'm not a big fan of the books, but they went to Paris to film it. So the scenery might be interesting.
Bless her heart. 'Madison-Spears Federline' sounds like a bad character from the Dynasty series.
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