Tabloid Baby
Tabloid Baby is a 1999 memoir by veteran journalist and television news producer Burt Kearns detailing his years as producer on two now-defunct tabloid television shows of the 1990s: A Current Affair and Hard Copy. Tabloid Baby was described by former A Current Affair host Maury Povich as "The Bible" (as in "Burt was there for the birthing of tabloid, he became the heart of the genre, and now he’s written the Bible")[1] and by veteran CBS newsman and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace as "sad, funny, undeniably authentic"... telling "the tale of what befell too much of mainstream television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good."
In recent years, the term "tabloid baby" has been used to describe the current crop of television news producers, reporters and executives who were trained, or got their starts in, the tabloid television system.
Sources
- New York Times
- New York Times article
- Salon.com
- L.A. Weekly
- Fairfield University magazine
- Interview from On The Edge with Paula Zahn
- Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television by John Thornton Caldwell
- Mike Wallace: A Life by Peter Sussman