Article May 18, 1998 Issue

Life with voids or supermarket tabloids

Scandals. Gossip. Dirt. There's no life in them.

By Channing Walker

OUR LIVES ARE ALREADY FILLED.

"The tabloids have won," began an essay in the Los Angeles Times on the tabloidization of American journalism. It went on to cite a swarm of stories that had spread from the supermarket tabloids to the mainstream press. Nodding to what was then the topic of the moment, it continued, "So, churned to a frenzy, we lurch towards the post-O.J. era. Truth be told, we sorta hate it, and we sorta like it. It keeps us amused here on Planet Tabloid" (Jan. 22, 1997, page B 2).

Whether you're a news junkie or not, that more than sorta makes you pause. If the tabloids really have won—and that's not a universally shared judgment—we might ask, Just how harmless is that "amusement"? And what void in our lives is so huge it takes a whole tabloid planet to fill it?

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