US: Internet "impinging on tabloid's turf"

Over the years, tabloid content in the US has shifted from "bloody car accidents" and "gruesome mutilations" in the 1950's to celebrity gossip in the 1960's, reports TIME magazine's Kate Pickert. However, it may be the Web that seems to have reversed editorial efforts as some tabloids like the Weekly World News have had to shut down.

Tabloids experienced a circulation growth in the 1980's, Pickert writes. However, television in the mid-90's took focus away from US tabloids and made circulation plummet by 30%, after broadcast coverage of OJ Simpson's trial "eclipsed anything that could be done in print". Today it is the Internet that is "impinging on tabloid's turf", wrote Pickert.

The "supermarket" tabloid the National Enquirer decreased the quantity of horrific imagery and began to feature more material on "alien abductions" and "medical oddities", in order to draw in more housewives.

By the late 1960's as titles like the Enquirer, the Globe and Rupert Murdoch's Star all began to focus their attention on celebrity gossip. Weekly World News, self-dubbed "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper", continued to write about "weird" material such as "zombie sightings".   

Although celebrity print publications have gained popularity in recent years, it is mostly in the "glossy" version that Star adopted around four years ago.

Source: TIME