I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact [Hardcover]

Bill Sloan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001

This lively, entertaining, and often funny history of America's supermarket tabloids is the first book to offer a behind-the-scene's look at the intriguing world of tabloid journalism, and especially the unique personalities that made it such a tremendously successful and influential force in today's media. Perhaps no one is more qualified to give the complete insider's account of the tabs than Bill Sloan, who helped guide the destinies of three major tabloids in their heyday. Sloan profiles the publishing eccentrics who conceived the first national tabloids, the greedy owners and screwball executives who called the shots, the ruthless underworld manipulators who fed off of the tabloids' phenomenal success, and the money-driven journalists who did the dirty work. This book reveals the whole sometimes-sordid, often-silly, but always-amazing story behind the multibillion-dollar industry these characters spawned. Based on candid interviews with the author, the fascinating personalities who created the tabloids explain in their own words how and why they built these notorious rags into powerful and often feared journalistic empires. The late, legendary "Enquirer" founder Generoso (Gene) Pope, former "Enquirer" president Iain Calder, "Globe" cocreator and longtime editor John Vader, and many others offer hundreds of funny, juicy, irresistible glimpses into their zany business. Sloan traces the development of the tabs from their beginnings in sleazy, gore-filled sensationalism or soft-core smut and sex scandals, through the celebrity crazes of Jackie O. and Princess Di. He also discusses the widespread influence of the tabloids today on television journalism and the Internet, where the distinction between news and entertainment is quickly vanishing. This enjoyable, eye-opening account is must reading for anyone interested in the people and the trends that shape our popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This overview comes from a tabloid insider: Sloan (JFK: Breaking the Silence) has been an editor for the National Enquirer and for the tabloid publisher Globe Communications. He thus displays empathy for the publications and their staff, capable journalists who used to divide their days between researching legitimate stories and making up scandalous, juicy ones, such as "JFK Is Alive on Skorpios!" or "109-Year-Old Man Lives in Hollow Log with Pregnant Wife & 6 Kids." Sloan recalls the business genius of former boss Generoso Paul Pope Jr.; with the financial backing of major crime boss Frank Costello, Pope took the struggling National Enquirer in the early 1960s from a mainstream publication to one that celebrated graphic sex and violence. Then, recognizing the potential of marketing to housewives standing in supermarket lines, Pope refashioned his paper again in the late 1960s to one that often highlighted miracle cures and terminally ill children. Later, Pope again saw tremendous new opportunity in exploiting the lives of celebrities, and tabloids flourished at their peak in the 1970s and '80s with a circulation of 12 million. Since the 1990s, Sloan argues, the emergence of sensationalism in mainstream print and nonprint media has caused tabloid circulation to drop off. Although this account is sometimes rambling and unfocused, Sloan does cover the major papers and the players in their heyday. Illus. not seen by PW. (Mar.) Forecast: Prometheus could have a hit with this title, which should appeal to a variety of markets, from students of journalism and cultural studies to tabloid fans to anyone curious about, or titillated by, the how and why of sleaze.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Don't be fooled by the whimsical title. This history of the seamier side of American journalism has been meticulously researched (though, true to tabloid style, Sloan cites few references). For anyone other than a journalism junkie, parts of the narrative may even seem dull. The author, a freelance writer who formerly worked for the National Enquirer, surely knows that for a story to have mass appeal it must report either celebrity misdeeds or bizarre occurrences. Besides Rupert Murdoch, who appears in a minor role, no famous names carry this story. Some of the incidents related, particularly those that preceded the downfall of Allied News Company, have freakish appeal, but the book deals mainly with the editorial and business decisions of relatively obscure men (no women have held key positions in tabloid publishing). Sloan examines the current blurring of the line between mainstream and tabloid journalism; he also discusses the ramifications of this trend and the recent consolidation of tabloid ownership. Recommended for journalism collections and larger public libraries.DSusan M. Colowick, North Olympic Lib. Syst., Port Angeles, WA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 251 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; 1 edition (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573929026
• ISBN-13: 978-1573929028
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,520,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Hogs & Wild Editors, March 13, 2001

By 

Bob Abborino (Boynton Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact (Hardcover)

"Enquiring Minds" who want the true inside scoop on the supermarket tabloids and the strange people who publish them can find it all in Bill Sloan's "I Watched A Wild Hog Eat My Baby".

There have been perhaps a half dozen books and any number of articles claiming to reveal the inner workings of the tabs. All, however, have been written by writers from the outside looking in, writers with little actual experience at the tabs trying to cash in for a quick buck, or writers with axes to grind - in most instances, all three.

Sloan, however, has prowled the inner sanctums of all the tabs. He has been the editor of the Globe and the National Tattler, top writer with the National Enquirer and close friends of editors, writers and reporters at the Star, Weekly World News, the National Examiner and the Sun. His connection with the tabloids goes back more than 30 years.

What's more, Sloan himself is a writer of national reputation, with dozens of mainstream books and articles, both fiction and non-fiction. As a professional journalist, he was a Pulitzer Prize nominee while an investigative reporter with the Dallas Times Herald.

Despite its rather bizarre title, Sloan's book is the definitive history of the supermarket tabloids over the last 30 years. He does not concentrate on the weird stories the tabs are famous for, but on the people who produced what is, arguably, a major phenomena of American journalism.

The book is briming with anecdotes, first person quotes and insights into the thinking of the sometimes eccentric Gene Pope, the godfather of the supermarket tabs, Mike Rosenblum, his most successful imitator, and Ian Calder, who largely responsible for the tabs' shift to celebrity-hounding after 1975.

If there is any criticism of Sloan's coverage of the early history of the Enquirer and supermarket tabloids, it's his failure to give more ateention to Dino Gallo, Nat Chrzan, Mel Snyder, Ted Mutch and Carl Grothmann, who all played major roles in Pope's shift from carnage to an almost respectable, near conventional format between 1969 to 1975. Curiously, this was the era during which the Enquirer enjoyed a soaring circulation, going from less than a million to five million.

In the final chapter, Sloan speculates on the future of the tabloids, beleaguered by falling circulation, televisions shows, some of which have gone where even tabs fear to go, and the new Barons of Baloney, the bean counters who would be Pope.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do Enquiring minds really want to know?, March 27, 2001

By 

John Wipff (San Antonio TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact (Hardcover)

Unequivocally YES! And that is why you MUST read this book!! After all, who knew that the National Enquirer was originally owned by a Pope? And financed by a Mafia kingpin? Hey, Bill Sloan knows and YOU will too, after reading this book.

If research were gold, this book would be Ft. Knox! There is more research here than you can shake a stick at--but who'd want to? You'll be too busy reading! After all, you simply must know what happened when 95 million tons of oatmeal exploded in Omaha. (It was NOT a pretty site!) Or when a wild hog actually did eat a....but that's going TOO far.

"Well written" is putting it mildly. "Couldn't put it down" is an understatement. "The best bathroom book since Peyton Place" doesn't give it enough credit. "Juicy" is only slightly correct. So what do you do if you own the biggest collection of supermarket tabloids on the planet? BILL SLOAN KNEW!!

If you love those "I SLEPT WITH A SPACE ALIEN AND GOT RICH TELLING ABOUT IT" or "BIGFOOT WAS MY NANNY" kinds of articles, you'll love this book. Heck, you'll love it even if you DON'T like `em because it's so full of interesting stories and characters!!

If you read only one book this year...you'll have a very slow year. But why not make it "I WATCHED A WILD HOG EAT MY BABY"?

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most current, and comprehensive, history of tabloids, October 13, 2001

By 

Thomas M. Sipos (Santa Monica, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact (Hardcover)

This extensively-researched history of American tabloids was released in 2001, the only post-1999 tabloid book so far. That's relevant, because since 1999 all major tabloids (Enquirer, Star, Globe, Examiner, Mira, Sun, Weekly World News) have been under single ownership. Some tabloid critics lament that this has undermined the tabloids' traditional competitiveness, and significantly altered their editorial policies and news coverage.

Anything written about tabs a decade earlier would be woefully out-of-date. As Sloan comments, the 1990s have seen the "tabloidization" of mainstream media. The major media have usurped the tabs' turf, creating what Sloan calls an "identity crisis" among tabloid editors and reporters, who must now compete directly against major media in search of scandalous type celebrity news, whereas in the past the major media shunned such stories.

Sloan analyzes how such 1990s news stories as OJ, the death of Princess Di, and "Bill and Monica" affected news coverage by the tabloids and their mainstream competition.

There are some other good tabloid books, several written by "insiders" like Sloan, but this is the only tabloid history that's up-to-date, and relevant to today and the near future.

Author Bill Sloan was an editor at the Globe and Enquirer, and a Pulitzer-nominated reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald.