The National Enquirer Earns Some Respect Over John Edwards Scandal

The New York Times reports:

The call came into The National Enquirer’s Los Angeles tip line — the kind advertised in the supermarket tabloid with the promise “We’ll Pay Big for Your Celebrity Gossip” — in late September 2007. The message was that a woman named Rielle Hunter had been hinting at an affair with John Edwards, then a candidate for president.

Within an hour, the tip was on the desk of Barry Levine, The Enquirer’s executive editor in New York. His readers didn’t care about politics for politics’ sake, not as long as there were rocky Hollywood marriages to be covered and celebrity cellulite photos to be snapped. But Mr. Levine was intrigued when he looked up Mr. Edwards on Google and found a poll saying that the candidate and his wife, Elizabeth, had one of the most admired marriages of all the candidates.

That meant Mr. Edwards was on a pedestal, and revelations of an affair could knock him off it — in line with The Enquirer’s mission. “It still shows the reader that wealthy people, rich people, people who they may admire — when you take away the money, have the same types of problems that they have in real life,” he said.

Pulling together reporters to dig into the rumor, Mr. Levine began something that once seemed unthinkable: not only the downfall of a presidential candidate with a meticulous image, but, for the sensational tabloid, something resembling respectability.

An article well worth your time.