Word: tabloidization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Marvin Kalb, the eminent critic of journalism and director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, asked the best question of the night at yesterday's panel on tabloid journalism in the ARCO Forum: "Fred, why are we here?" Fred Schauer, the academic dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, came up with a fine answer about the limits of the public sphere and the quality of debate in our democratic republic--essentially, questioning the worthiness of celebrity journalism in America...
...sides, the one theoretical, the other practical, seem on the surface to align perfectly. But in fact, Schauer's rationale for the debate applied to a different set of panelists, namely the mainstream media. What the K-School crowd wanted to know was why it is that tabloid journalism has become legitimate--legitimate enough to hold a forum on it at the Kennedy School of Government. And the answers from the tabloidists present was that tabloidism is legitimate because it has been absorbed into the mainstream, and Steve Coz was sitting there to prove...
...past two or so years, since he was put in charge of editorial content for the Enquirer, Coz has been out to prove the worthiness of tabloid journalism to American democracy. He has declared that his magazine will no longer publish stories or photos of manufactured events, though he admits the concept of an event's construction is itself open to interpretation as a matter of degree. (A post-modern editor!) He has written an op-ed piece for The New York Times which, he told me, was solicited from him by The Times, though the paper has a policy...
...Independent here. He has worked for the Enquirer since 1981, just two years after his graduation--a whole career. So it is possible that he feels the need to justify his choice of "profession." Luckily for him, historical circumstance has made his job a great deal easier: the tabloid doesn't have to reach very far for legitimacy because the standards of legitimacy have deteriorated to the level of the tabloids. Coz was quick to make the point with headlines from ABC News ("More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source"), including "Michael Jackson Reveals...
...right: the media's gone tabloid. And it's not just ABC. Think of Dateline NBC's faked car crash-ups. But it's not just TV news magazines. Consider all the local broadcasts featuring child sodomies and Kennedy delinquencies. Nor is it just television. How about Newsweek's cover story this week: "Galaxies: How the Universe Began; How it Might End." But not just weeklies. Even The Times has become fixated on Marv Albert's trial. Coz was correct in remarking, "Marv Albert's toupee falls off during sex, and the country goes crazy." But tabloidism isn't even...