Brian Williams  On Himself and the Enquirer


BRIAN WILLIAMS'S HISTORY

For me, this was a career change. I graduated from college and taught school for a while, and then was in sales and marketing for a long time. I came to the Enquirer as a reporter with a certain amount of curiosity and a reasonable amount of intelligence and I loved to find things out. So I really started from scratch and worked as a reporter doing stories like dogs saving kids, dogs being kidnapped, people losing 600 pounds, and really learned how to get the details of the story, learned how to get the emotions of a story, learned how to build rapport with people and learned all those on those kinds of stories. Probably the worst time I ever had was a child beauty pageant for like five- and six-year-olds. Probably the most gruesome experience I can ever imagine, the girl was, well, we labeled her "miracle baby" she should have been dead, she was dead in the womb, and through some miracle had managed to survive and now she was in this beauty pageant, gruesome experience, just the whole nature of child pageants. But it was learning how to get the details of a story, how to get those emotions. And then I went on to do a lot of celebrity things that we do now. My job now, I'm an articles editor, I manage a group of reporters, do mostly celebrity journalism stories where we're writing about what Oprah's doing, what Burt's doing, that kind of thing. And I have a group of reporters, they work on those stories. I'm involved in supervising what they're doing, planning the strategies, determining what stories we do, coming up with new story ideas.

THE ENQUIRER: WHAT IT AIN'T, WHAT IT IS

I think people, first of all, I think one of the things we have is we're the bandleader. So anything that happens in terms of a tabloid is immediately the Enquirer. And so the two-headed aliens, and the monsters from death, and slasher murderers, that's immediately thought of as what we do. And normally those are people who've never picked us up and never read us. We don't do those kinds of stories. I think we push the envelope of what a journalist is. We get the story. If I took any story that anybody's working in the story, and took any three people here, I'd pick them at random, I'll take them against any three reporters anyplace. And they'll come back with a story. Without hesitation. And the thing our reader knows too is that we don't hesitate to get the story. If we want to get a story, we'll put as many people and as many resources in it as possible. We don't hesitate that way. It isn't a question of worrying about the accounting department or something else — if there's a story out, we'll get that. I just signed an expense report for $10,000 for an eight-day story. And that's just the reporting team. I haven't got the photogs yet.

If it's a good story, and we decide we want the story, we have all the resources we need. Sometimes that's one reporter for 10 minutes. And sometimes that's six reporters for two weeks.

WHY THE ENQUIRER HAS A BETTER STORY

It will be a better story. It will be a better story because there will be better detail, number one. There'll be incredible detail. If it's a rescue from a burning building, you read that story, you will have it, unless you had a videotape of it, you'll have every detail, you'll know what the structure of the building was, what the people had on, you'll have every little tiny detail. Then you'll have the emotions involved. How did they feel? And I think when you talk about the average reporter going out, we hire a lot of people as stringers, that on a one-shot basis, and I'm amazed constantly at A, how easily they're defeated. How easily they take no, and secondly, how unable they are to probe somebody. Most people are not particularly articulate. I ask you how you feel about something, it's rare that you're gonna give me a good description of how you feel. They say "fine" or "happy" or something like that. Our reporters are really good at probing through that and finding out, "Well, how did you feel?" Maybe giving you some examples of how to say how do you feel, is this what you're saying, is this what, and then someone reacts to that. It becomes an enjoyable process for them because they're sharing what's going on, and they're able to articulate. And most of the time, very happy with that process, because they read the copy, and they say, "Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt," and they're very happy with it. Most reporters come back and say, well, you know, he said it was "hard" and he was "tired." Someone's on a rescue, spend six weeks out in the ocean in a cooler. "Oh yeah, it was the hardest moment of my life" and that's it. C'mon. What happened? How'd ya feel, did you want to die? Was there a moment that you wanted to die? Was there a moment that you wished you'd never done this before, how did you feel? How did you feel when you saw the ship that wanted to save you? What was going on inside? And that's a very time-consuming process. When we interview somebody, our good reporters always tell them, "Look, this is a paper. It's gonna take a while. So just relax." And they open up.

LOOKING AT THE COVERS

Telly Savalas' great last days, Oprah diets, new calendars, Michael's secret $10 million plot to pay off the boy.

Good journalism. What else is here? "Coach" star life for drugs, booze, and girls, by his wife of 16 years, that's a good tell-all from his wife, very good interview, the reporter did a good job. "Beverly Hills 90210," the marriage broke up, these are like transitional things. These are the kind of stories that people like. Tammy Wynette fighting for life. Tony Danza in a ski accident. This is the replacement of the small town barber shop hairdresser. These are the people that we have in common as Americans. And this is what happened to them. And what's interesting about them. Donald and Marla get wed. I'm sure the Times had somebody there. I doubt sincerely whether if we wanted to know what happened at the wedding the same way a wedding guest went to a wedding, you would get that same feel from the Times. But I'm confident if you read this, you will have the same impression that if you talked to somebody who'd been there.

I think this is pretty similar. Michael, you know the news there, once again, transitions. Divorce, Whitney lost some weight. Weight loss, and birth and death, and divorce. Pretty well staples. 'Cause that's what people are interested in. Our readership, you know, that 18 to maybe 40-year-old woman, that's our readership. And those are the things she's interested in.

...readership of about 20 million. We're the largest selling newspaper in the United States.

We pay very well. Our top people earn six figures. Reporters. We pay very well. We work people very hard, and it's very, very difficult to get a job here. Our alumni have done well. We have alumni that are in, have gone back to more traditional dailies, and doing very well. One of our alumni is a major book editor with a couple bestsellers on the list right now, we have a former head of a Fox News Division is an alumnus, so we find talented people.

There's certainly a stigma, there's certainly a stigma. I think the jobs that someone leaving here would want, they're not gonna be to cover city council meetings in Dubuque, they're gonna get a talented, able, very experienced reporter. So I don't think that's gonna be a problem. Will they get a job at the institute and discuss ethics? I doubt it.

There's not a lot of movement that way. There could be, in being on the other side of those things, all of this talk from time to time about how easy that job would be, knowing what we know in how the other side does things, there is a movement that way. Most people here, we have very little turnover. People love what they're doing and that's basically involvement. Good reporters love good stories, and we do good stories and don't get hamstrung on a lot of triviality and always have the resources to do the stories. And that's what good reporters want to do. It's hard to match that someplace else.

HISTORY

The Enquirer was a weekly, was a Hearst publication, it was the New York Enquirer, and then it was bought by Mr. Pope, who actually made it what it is. Started out as kind of a crime story, kinda gory murderer-type publication, moved down to Florida, came up with a brilliant idea, and I think he's really the person that either thought up or certainly exploited the idea of selling it at grocery store check-outs. With that, had to move the subject matter to something a little more acceptable than grisly murderers, and so we got much more into celebrity publications. And celebrity stories.

We probably use, on staff, will be about 20 reporters. We use another 100 to 200 freelancers on a real regular basis, and probably have another 1000, you know, with the stringers that we use at varying times over the year depending on where something is.

DESCRIPTION OF AN ENQUIRER REPORTER

I think the first thing is intelligence. Our people are very smart. That's a key, key element. I believe that you can't teach that. They say in basketball you can't teach height, and you can't teach them to be smart. So they have to be intelligent. They have their own personalities. Every one of them, there's no clone Enquirer reporter. We have people, we have the whole gamut, which as an editor is fun, because I can match, it's like I have this bench, and I can match a personality a style, an age, a size, a color, you name it, to whatever the story is. And that's nice. So they have very definite personalities, and very definite styles.

Aggressive, in a variety of ways. We have overtly bang-down-the-door aggressive, and we have butter-wouldn't-melt in-your-mouth aggressive. But they're aggressive. They won't take no for an answer. Their way of receiving no is different, but they're relentless. They're curious, they're clever. Enquirer reporters are all clever. They'll figure out whether it's something very simple. One of the things we did when we grabbed Kissinger's garbage, that's always a traditional Enquirer thing is to get the trash. Getting trash is harder than it looks sometimes.

EXAMPLE OF A JOB RISK

There's a great story, we sent an, a major country celebrity, and married, and we heard rumors that there were problems in the marriage and he was getting divorced. PR absolutely denied it. "No problem, very happy." We got a delightful call from a woman on vacation in Acapulco. And she said, "You won't believe it, but Kenny Rogers is here with a woman, and I know it's not his wife, 'cause I'm a big fan of his, and you ought to get somebody down here right away." Our readers have an interesting way of talking to us, too. They talk to us as if, and this I think is a wonderful thing, they talk to us as if they're assigning us to do something. Very rarely do we get a call in where they don't say, "Look, you guys should get out there and cover this right now." It's like they know what our responsibilities are and they're telling us to get on it. And they're surprised if we don't know something. "You didn't know that already?" They have high expectations for us. So we sent our photographer and our reporter down there, and they found them out by the pool and they got some pictures. And he had security people with him who wanted those cameras. And so they managed, they found a maid, and the maid snuck them in these little villas, and they got in the shower. We have our photographer and our reporter, the reporter's experienced, but the cameraman, God bless him, this was a freelance assignment, it was his first Enquirer experience. And since has done wonderful work for us on some other things, but it was a baptism by fire. But they're in the shower. And these three security guys are going through this whole place looking for them. And they're removing the film from the camera, hopefully if they are caught they would be able to hold onto the film. And they're in there for 15 minutes. And finally the maid comes in and says they've gone, they're looking someplace else. And then they were, as they were leaving, they were accosted in the lobby.

They were fine. It's once again that kind of self confidence. Our reporter, instead of being intimidated or afraid or anything else, explained to the hotel manager that, look, we would file lawsuits for harassment very, very quickly, was on the phone to us and we were backing him up in terms of doing this, but he needed to be there right on the spot. It wasn't the time to break down in tears or to throw down his pen and say, "I'm not doing this." It's like, I better think.

I'm not sure the photographer enjoyed it, I never really got that far, but he certainly has a wonderful story to tell in the bars.

The laws are very direct on that, where you can be and where you can't be. If you're in a public situation, and I have access to that, legally I can take pictures. I can't hide in your bedroom and take pictures.

On a private citizen, we wouldn't do it. A private citizen wouldn't interest us. If you're in a public situation, and I'd have to check this because I honestly don't know the answer to it, if you're in a public situation, I can take a picture.

I believe we can. It's not something we would do.

It would seem to me, you can be specifically public in a certain situation. Anybody that we would want to take a picture of would be a public figure. By definition, that's a public figure.

We ran that on the cover? That surprises me. We may have done that, but that surprises me. I don't remember doing that.

Some of them are, especially in that case, there's also some legal terms of that, but I think in terms of those Jackson children, at worst case, alleged victims, and very possibly victims, and we're real sympathetic to them. They've been through enough, and we're not gonna add to that. They're not news, what they look like isn't news. The news is what Jackson did.