Free Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir by Gary Taylor Page A

imagination when
I returned to The Post after learning that I probably was not " Enquirer material." Or, maybe I would
have been had I not gotten caught in the middle of an internal
political squabble between the paper's British and American
editors. At the end of my "tryout" working for one of the American
editors, the paper offered an extension with no guarantee of a job.
Since I had exhausted my vacation time, I declined, choosing
instead to return to a sure thing at The
Post .

    Contrary to what
might be the popular perception, I found my Enquirer colleagues to be the most
professional group of journalism heavyweights I had ever
encountered. The staff included many burned-out mainstream stars
who sought a high-paying change of pace. One example was a former
political writer from The Chicago
Tribune who greeted me with a smile and
said, "Can you believe this place? I just got back from Rio doing a
story on a bleeding statue of Christ. What a hoot!" That list also
included The Houston
Post 's Pulitzer winner, Gene Goltz, who, I
was told, had been assigned to stake out the Jackie Onassis
apartment in New York City. What an image for me: Gene Goltz on the
Jackie O nightshift waiting for her to step into the street so he
could scream embarrassing questions. The
Enquirer remains an incredible commercial
success, providing mostly entertainment but also, I found, a good
deal of important information buried behind its facade of outrage.
As such, the paper carefully monitored its sales demographics, and
it was well known that any time Jackie O's face appeared on the
front page, sales soared off the charts.

    The current star
on the staff, however, was a former Boston
Globe reporter about my own age who took me
under his wing. Jeff had done a story the month before that sent
sales to a record for the year. Crashing Frank Sinatra's birthday
party and being physically evicted by Old Blue Eyes himself, Jeff
had written an unforgettable piece on celebrity rage that shared
the experience of having the legendary crooner spit in his face.
Beyond the smokescreen of celebrity coverage that paid the bills,
however, Jeff offered an anecdote demonstrating the way the paper
actually developed solid stories of general interest that even the
nation's most prestigious publications would want to have.
Searching through obscure historical journals, Jeff had uncovered
an academic treatise by some anthropologists who had analyzed some
old stone tablets discovered in New England and linked them to
ninth-century Iberia to show that the Spanish had reached the New
World some five hundred years before Columbus. He wrote a story and
presented it to his editor who smiled and said: "Something isn't
right."

    "Huh?" Jeff asked.

    "These tablets," the editor
continued. "I don't believe they came from Iberia."

    Jeff shook his head and asked, "OK,
where are they from?"

    The editor just sighed and pointed toward the
heavens.

    "Of course," said Jeff. "I should
have known."

    He then spent the next week calling
so-called authorities on UFOs for their reaction to discovery of
these tablets. Finally, a former astronaut agreed these had to be
from outer space. So his story ran with a headline: "Tablets from
Outer Space Discovered in New England?" His first paragraph
featured the astronaut as a primary source on the meaning of these
tablets. Then, the rest of the story cited the anthropologists and
their theory on Iberian origins. Anyone with half-a-brain reading
past the first paragraph would glean information of anthropological
significance and likely chuckle at the UFO link that had attracted
their attention in the first place. Jeff's point had applications
anywhere in the news business. Every editor or publisher has their
own agenda. But it is possible to compromise and finesse your
assignment so that somehow everyone is satisfied with the result,
and, most importantly, the readers receive the information they
need to carry on with their lives.
    As a stimulant