Several of whom are being held in there have put a contract out on him.
They think it would be a great feather in their cap to take out O.J. Simpson.
O.J., of course, is very hot.
Next, Ben Thomas, a small-town boy who grew up to be Roseanne's new fiancé.
We had launched a fishing expedition on Ben Thomas,
and as luck would have it, yesterday the fish came knocking at the door in the L.A. office
in the person of a former girlfriend who was a stripper, who wants to tell us all about him.
They talk about Jimmy Swaggart, an evangelist who may have fallen on hard times.
What else?
A rich guy that they're trying to link Princess Daya to.
Yeah, I think we should do.
I mean, I fear we may have been scoped to that one bit.
Hi. How about Andrea?
Yeah, I think those have to be in charge.
Unfortunately, things are shaping up.
Yeah, you got some there?
An Oprah Winfrey publicist has quit and filed a lawsuit.
Los Angeles bureau chief Marianne Norbaum.
She's not going to do any interviews. What a surprise.
Editor Phil Bunton.
What I'd like to do, though, is put a sizable sort of money offer into her, like 20 or 25,000.
Yeah, I don't think that would be nearly enough to shake this one loose.
It isn't.
Globe goes with a page 20 story based on the lawsuit, no interview.
The employees do pay for interviews and aren't ashamed of it.
One thing money buys you is exclusivity.
He's not going to tell the story to our competition, and that's very important to us.
Ben Thomas's former girlfriend.
Well, we are interviewing today a woman who says that she and Ben grew up as neighbors,
and then they became, he became her first, I'm sorry, she became his first lover when he was something like 16 and she was 18.
Let me make sure that there are really glamorous shots of her.
Or we're also going to do a strip joint where she strips.
Yeah, that's not my idea, glamorous.
Oh yeah, somebody owns that house now.
Globe reporter Chris Doherty and photographer Peter Brandt have gone with the woman, Stephanie Neal, back to the old neighborhood.
This was Ben's house. Where was his bedroom?
His bedroom was this section right back in here.
Cut through the back and walk down the other street.
Stephanie poses for pictures. This one will make the magazine.
Okay, that's good.
Then the strip club and more pictures.
And then back home for the interview.
She talks about the first time she and Thomas made love.
I believe it was his first time.
So that's obviously a special moment.
Very special, yeah.
The tabloid people talk about how tough the competition is. Well, listen.
Hello? Yeah, this is her.
Oh, hold on just a second.
But Globe has paid her. She is theirs exclusively.
I need to know, I guess, as quickly as possible what the tenor of the story is going to be.
Back in Boca Raton, they're promising favorable treatment in exchange for pictures in a feature on Vampirist and Rice.
What I may have to do is just tell the guy in writing that the story will be positive.
Can you give me the name of that photographer you told me about?
Meanwhile, Adam Skull is trying to find someone to shoot Swigert's church service in Baton Rouge.
You're going to turn down a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, assignment for a wedding? I'll kill you.
In Los Angeles, Chris has learned he'll be working through the weekend trying to confirm Stephanie's story.
I'm trying to dig up an old Little League baseball picture.
And she's cool about the poly if we have to do it.
One way of checking Stephanie's story is to have her take a polygraph test. She does and passes it.
John, Adam at the Globe here.
Are you free this weekend?
No, John, that's not the answer I wanted to hear. Let's try this again. Are you free this weekend?
In LA, Chris gets through to Ben Thomas.
Do you remember Stephanie?
You do.
Great. Super. Thanks, Ben. Take care.
You did it.
Chris is still working the weekend.
I know he told me no, but I thought I'd call back. And if you can imagine it, I'm on my knees begging.
And who's that from?
Pat Gregor gathers gossip, an item about Richard Gere.
Runs up to Sean Connery, plants a big smack-a-roo on his lips. Sean goes, ah! Runs off the set.
Took him ages to be coaxed back onto the set. He's a Scotsman. He doesn't want to be kissed on the lips by another guy.
Linda McHale scans a thousand photos a day, looks for odd things, odd couples.
If they're married and they're with someone they're not supposed to be with, then so.
You got a story.
Yeah.
By Monday's meeting, things are clearer. Someone did go to Baton Rouge.
Photos will come in by satellite of Melanie Griffiths kissing Don Johnson, a reconciliation.
The best picture we've got is him on a horse and her leaning up to him and holding his face and giving him a big smack-a-roo.
If there's a picture that stops him in the tracks, a good picture is better than 144-point headline.
This week's Globe may have both the O.J. story, Melanie Griffiths, and Di, a tabloid star.
Are you able to make her look more glamorous? We don't need to do anything with her. She's always perfect.
Bob Stevens is working on a Di photo. Another woman's skirt was blocking part of Di's, but with a computer, he can fix that.
Let me just zoom in on him.
I want to go real hard into this screaming, insane frenzy.
Can you rack your brain to do it with a W without?
Can we shrink those more?
Well, it could be even more. Yeah, I could do that.
The edition is taking shape. Melanie, Di, Swagger, its congregation indeed scanty.
Lawyer Joe Marie Fredericks has read the copy, that's standard. The front page.
Okay, great.
Okay, we're done?
We're done.
What was that, though?
We're done. We're out of here.
In Memphis, Tennessee, the press is rolled.
Back in the Boca Raton newsroom, editors make two points. One, we get no respect from mainstream journalism.
I think we get respect grudgingly when we break a story before they do. But the respect that we do get is grudging.
And second, tabloids and mainstream are a lot more alike than they used to be.
The tabloids have become more mainstream, and the mainstream has become more tabloid.
And the readers mostly, unfortunately, don't care about Bosnia, but they do care about O.J.
And they watch Oprah every day on TV. They love Oprah.
People glance at the headlines, sometimes deny ever buying or reading the magazines.
I sometimes thumb through and look at the pictures, but I have more important reading to do.
But eight to ten million Americans do buy them every week. They must be doing something right.
Garlic, vinegar, and clove.
The tabloids and the mainstream press are closer together than they used to be.
Many news organizations, print and broadcast, of course, still cover the serious stuff. But the trends have critics worried.
News is a business. It needs to make a profit. But at its best, it is something else, too.
The vital link between citizens of a free country and their government.
Sometimes those goals conflict. Keeping them in balance, giving people what they want and what they need, remains the challenge.
That's all for the Media Circus. Now here's a look at next week's CNN Presents.
Join us each week at this time for a look beyond the headlines at the most compelling stories of our time.
I'm Judy Woodruff, and this is CNN Presents.
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