For Tabloids, a Day Which Will Live in Infamy

Journalism, the art and craft of catching history on the fly and pinning it down on a sheet of newsprint, reserves a special place of honor for those who practice it in cases of extreme adversity.

In the annals of American newspapering, however, what happened in this seaside, upscale Florida town last autumn was unprecedented. In the inimitable style of the publications that were involved, it might be summed up in punchy headlines:

“Germs Invade Supermarket Tabs! Hero Journos Keep Presses Rolling!”

The employees of American Media Inc.--which publishes the National Enquirer, Star, Globe, Weekly World News, Sun and National Examiner--have come up with a bit of doggerel of their own to describe their frightening encounter with the anthrax bacteria and what followed: “evacuated, medicated, dedicated.”

They also have been ostracized by some of their neighbors, their publications have been plagued by declining circulations and the head of their company has threatened to pull out of Florida altogether.

“There is good news,” said Steve Coz, editorial director of the six tabs, over a breakfast of scrambled eggs. “Liza Minnelli rehabbed herself for her upcoming wedding.”

More than three months on, it’s still not known who introduced deadly anthrax into AMI’s headquarters or why the weeklies were targeted.

The infestation of spores killed one employee--popular British-born photo editor Bob Stevens--landed another worker in the hospital and infected a third, sowed fear and doubt among the staff and compelled public health authorities to quarantine the building, forcing the staff to work in cramped temporary quarters or at home.

More than 1,100 AMI employees and recent visitors to the building were given nasal swabs to test for anthrax, then issued a dose of antibiotics. More than 1,000 postal workers also were tested, but no other cases were reported.

“As a newsperson, you are covering other people’s tragedies all the time, but the notion that it is happening to you, especially coming right into your own newsroom, is shocking,” said Leon Wagener, news editor of the Star, one of the papers. “Anyone who had been in that building was possibly infected.”

For Wagener, that meant not only himself but his 10-year-old daughter, Madison, who had been a frequent visitor. For 60 anxious days, as the girl swallowed antibiotics along with her father, Wagener watched for symptoms of anthrax: headache, vomiting, chills, fever, often followed by death within 24 to 36 hours.

“Fortunately, she didn’t have any bad effects physically, but psychologically she did,” Wagener said. “She had a concern about letting anyone in Boca know that she might be one of the victims. There was a stigma, especially among children.”

But the threat of sudden death by disease was only half the double whammy of events that caught the tabs in its vise. Not only have the papers and their employees had to cope with anthrax, but their readers--AMI claims total weekly readership of 45 million--have had plenty of other things to think about since September. Spokesman Gerald McKelvey said overall circulation at one point dropped by as much as a third and still is down 8%.

In a country that defines itself as at war, people may be less interested in the love life of Tom Cruise and more in how operations in Afghanistan are proceeding.

“People have only so much reading capacity every day,” said Doug Arthur, a newspaper industry analyst in New York. “Suddenly there have been so many life-threatening things to keep track of.”

The three-story AMI headquarters building in a Boca Raton office park remains closed and has been ringed with a fence and yellow crime-scene tape to keep out the curious. Tourists, some from as far away as Japan, show up once in a while to have their pictures taken.

The fountain by the entrance no longer gurgles, and the once manicured grounds have grown unkempt. At night, security guard Bill Cochrane says, the still-illuminated computer screens inside the building cast an eerie, disconcerting light.

“It’s like somebody came by and went pfft! and everybody disappeared,” the retired policeman said.

Was the tabs’ anthrax infestation the next salvo in the terrorist campaign against the U.S. that many had been bracing for? Government investigators discount any connection to Al Qaeda terrorists, but some at AMI, including Chairman David J. Pecker, believe the company was targeted by Muslim extremists because it has the word “American” in its name.

Pecker can cite circumstantial evidence to support his conclusion. Of the 19 young hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 14 of them for a time lived in communities bordering Boca Raton. The wife of one AMI editor even rented two of them an apartment.

“My personal theory is, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Pecker said. “Just a month before, I had a big sign--’American Media’--put up.”

If Pecker is right, this biological attack on the United States opened in this comfortable community of 75,000, which became famous during the Roaring ‘20s as a sun-kissed watering hole for the rich. Attention quickly shifted northward, however, when letters laden with the rod-shaped Bacillus anthracis germ surfaced in the Senate’s Hart office building, at NBC-TV and the New York Post in Manhattan and at a New Jersey post office.

What first seemed like a bizarre and life-threatening problem for the tabs was now a bona fide national emergency. In all, five people died and 18 others were infected but survived, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

At this point in the massive FBI-led investigation, in which the reward for information was just upped to $2.5 million, the government’s working hypothesis is that the unknown anthrax attacker is a “home-grown” terrorist nursing a grudge, similar to Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski.

“Were these letters sent to us by Osama bin Laden? I don’t think so,” said an FBI agent in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If this were Al Qaeda, they would have sent a thousand letters.”

Among professional journalists, the AMI tabloids get about as much respect as a starred French chef accords lunch at Burger King. But under Pecker and Coz, the tabs have cut down on the lurid (and, at one times perhaps, occasionally invented) content and concentrated on news and celebrity coverage.

Of late, the tabs have scored some reporting firsts, for instance during the Clinton White House scandals, and in revealing that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock. Yet few in the media still consider what these papers do to be respectable mainstream journalism.

Since the U.S. war on terrorism began, AMI weeklies have printed an expose claiming that Bin Laden suffers from “underdeveloped sexual organs,” branded his followers “slime balls” and alerted readers that for $19 they can buy toilet paper bearing Bin Laden’s image.

Frankly, none of this is Pulitzer Prize material. But, in how they faced the anthrax crisis and have coped since, the supermarket tabs may have known their finest hour.

“These people have really gone through what would be a horrific time in anybody’s lives,” Pecker said admiringly. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

For some of their neighbors on Florida’s southeastern coast, AMI editors and reporters became pariahs. At one point, when Pecker’s mother-in-law went to have her hair done at a beauty parlor in nearby Boynton Beach, the employees, who knew her, wouldn’t let her in. They were worried she might somehow give them anthrax.

“There was no sympathy at all in the community,” Pecker said.

It was 6:30 on a Sunday evening in October when the AMI chairman, who was alone at headquarters with a security guard, got the call telling him to leave immediately. The test results had come back from swabs performed on Stevens’ computer keyboard. They had tested positive for anthrax.

(Ultimately, the hard-shelled spores would be detected at 84 locations on all three floors of the AMI building, said Tim O’Connor, a Palm Beach County Health Department spokesman. The germs also were found at seven area post offices, in trails consistent with tainted mail presumably sent to the tabs.)

Suddenly, Pecker said, “we had no building to go back to.” Yet the next day was closing--final publication deadline--for the three most important papers: the Enquirer, the Globe and the Star.

That evening, Pecker and Coz called a “war council” with AMI executives at a separate circulation building in Delray Beach, about 10 miles north of Boca Raton. Before the night was out, there were 40 editors on hand, mapping out pages for the coming week’s editions.

To play it safe in tropical storm-prone Florida, the staffs had concocted “hurricane pages” of material that could be published any time. These features, including a “Stupid Cupid” review of Hollywood marriages that crashed and burned, were siphoned by phone and Internet from the computers now out of bounds at headquarters.

Within 48 hours, Pecker had bought 500 desktop and notebook computers to replace hardware now potentially contaminated by anthrax. He estimates he spent $10 million from his own pocket to make his tabs operational again. His staff, he said, performed with the same aplomb as the U.S. military personnel who quickly rebuilt the airfield in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

“We didn’t miss a single page,” Coz said. For journalists, who aspire to the Hemingway ideal of courage--grace under pressure--that is the most treasured praise of all. And at the time, AMI personnel were laboring under the added uncertainly of the anthrax threat, not knowing if they had been infected. Even the medicine they were given caused health problems, including diarrhea and stomach cramps.

The staff at AMI is much harsher when assessing the performance of the government. The bacterial outbreak brought a veritable army of official organizations to Boca Raton: the FBI, CDC, Environmental Protection Agency, Army intelligence, Coast Guard and state and county health departments.

“There was no coordination among the agencies,” Pecker said.

When Stevens, the 63-year-old photo editor, died Oct. 5 of inhaled anthrax, people at AMI learned of it by reading the Miami Herald’s Web site. “I think as CEO I should have gotten a call,” Pecker said.

Another AMI employee, mail-room worker Ernesto Blanco, 74, found out he had been infected with the bacteria when the TV set in his room, tuned to CNN, announced it. He had been hospitalized in Miami with delirium, a 105-degree fever, and his doctors, who were bewildered by his symptoms, thought he was dying.

Because the disease was caught in time, Blanco survived. Deeply religious, he believes that “God needed me more here.” The Cuban-born man his colleagues affectionately call “Ernie” handled 5,000 pieces of mail a day, and he can’t remember which one might have transmitted the bacteria. Doctors haven’t yet approved Blanco’s return to work, but when he handles his mail at home, he now wears gloves.

O’Connor, the health department spokesman, said officials were facing the gravest public health emergency in years, and one without any true precedent.

“It’s been a huge undertaking just to keep up with people and make sure they have somewhere to turn,” O’Connor said. “Unfortunately, we did lose Mr. Stevens early. But Mr. Blanco did recover.”

The next phase in the tabs’ battle back to something approaching normality is set to occur by Feb. 18, when AMI is supposed to move into 53,000 square feet of leased office space a quarter of a mile from its shuttered headquarters. That will allow all reporters and editors to again work under one roof.

To boost revenue, the newsstand prices on at least two of the tabs--the Enquirer and the Star--are being increased and the papers will be bulked up from 48 pages to 60. That, Pecker said, should help him sell more ads.

Cleanup of the headquarters building should last a year, but it’s not certain whether AMI ever will go back. Coz admits that his wife is opposed to him ever again setting foot in the place. On the other hand, Terry Jackson, editor in chief of an AMI monthly, Auto World Magazine, said he is willing to take his chances now to retrieve his Rolodex.

“I think if we go back in that building, we’re probably talking two years from now,” Jackson said.

If, that is, AMI decides to remain in Florida. Irked about how everyone from Gov. Jeb Bush on down has dealt with the anthrax crisis, the publisher has talked of moving his tabs and their multimillion-dollar payroll elsewhere. AMI is as much a victim of terrorism as any tenant at the World Trade Center, Pecker said, “but to date, I have received no financial help or assistance from any government agency.”

At AMI, many feel they were forgotten as soon as the anthrax crisis rolled north.

“Of course, we’re all sort of angry that no one’s been caught,” Jackson said. “And when the anthrax moved to Washington and New York, the media largely ignored AMI. I haven’t read much about us and the fact a man was killed here.”