Tabloids

In the 18th Century, the press served a variety of purposes that included political, local and international news reporting. It also served a purpose of simple entertainment. Mindless reading with the sole purpose of providing so called “entertainment. These pamphlets concentrated their efforts reporting crime, gossip, and in some cases, a different angle of the mainstream news. Some claimed these publications had no future and would soon disappear.

“Even before the penny papers, a popular pamphlet literature had emerged that included the chronicles of deadly crimes as well as moral tracts with lurid stories of human depravity.” Starr p.136

Fast forward to the 21st Century and these pamphlets have survived and multiplied successfully. The new “American supermarket tabloid” is alive and doing well. These papers report the stories from their own point of view, which in many cases is not authentic. The most popular of these tabloids in the United States are; Star, Sun, The Globe, The National Enquirer, and the National Examiner. I guess, as history has clearly proven, this type of “reporting” has and will always have a good customer base to support it.