The Godfather of Tabloid: Generoso Pope Jr. and the National Enquirer
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They're impossible to miss at grocery stores and newsstands in America: colorful, heavily illustrated tabloid newspapers with headlines promising shocking, unlikely, and sometimes impossible stories within. Although ubiquitous now, the supermarket tabloid's origin can be traced to one man: Generoso Pope Jr. (1921—1988), an eccentric, domineering chain-smoker who died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-one. In The Godfather of Tabloid, Jack Vitek explores the life and career of Pope and the founding of the mother of all tabloids, the National Enquirer. Upon graduating from MIT, Pope worked briefly for the CIA until he purchased the New York Enquirer with dubious financial help from mob boss Frank Costello. Working with American journalists and Brits from Fleet Street, Pope changed the name, format, and content of the modest newspaper until it resembled nothing America had seen before. Grounded in interviews with Pope and his detractors and associates, The Godfather of Tabloid is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who created a newspaper genre and changed the world of publishing forever. Publishers Weekly In his first solo effort, journalist and author Vitek (Idol Rock Hudson) introduces the original tabloid boss: Generoso Pope Jr., creator of the infamous National Enquirer, mother of the ubiquitous supermarket tabloid (and, arguably, upper-class iterations Us Weekly and People). Vitek's material largely focuses on the fiery management, harsh opposition to, and heavy influence of the Enquirer since 1952, when Pope purchased it (then the New York Enquirer) with help from the Mafia. The endeavor's stunted beginning was rife with gory photos and absurd stories deemed unsuitable for grocery store checkouts-one early issue included photos of Lee Harvey Oswald's autopsy-and a policy of literally putting words in subjects' mouth. Pope Jr.'s riches-to-rags-to-riches story-born into a family of self-made millionaires (with assumed Mafia connections), devastated by his father's untimely death, shunned by his family and left penniless, redeemed as a successful media mogul-fascinates with the ins and outs of bottom-basement journalism and the ferocity with which Pope Jr. ruled and defended his media foxhole, becoming a model for none other than Rupert Murdoch. Vitek lays on the Mafia lingo a bit too thick-overusing language like "whacked," with a mob movie reference always at the ready-but offers an original American story of a tough, embattled media player with uncanny gifts for giving the public what they want. Photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
