In Britain, the popular tabloid press, for all its faults, is recognizably a part of the press tout court. In America, apart from a few big-city papers which are far less popular and, in fact, mostly struggling to survive, the tabloid press is sold in supermarket checkout lines and is beyond the journalistic pale. Yet one also finds in America, often in the supermarket racks next to The Globe and The National Enquirer, what amounts to tabloids for middle-brows—tabloids whose credentials as bona fide journalism remain unquestioned. America, after all, pioneered the concept of half-educating a majority of its people instead of properly educating a tiny minority, as most of the rest of the world still does, so there is a very large market here (about the same size as that for the tabloids in Britain, in fact) for Time and Newsweek and U.S. News—publications written by and for would-be intellectuals.

The corrupting influence of the newsmagazines on the rest of journalism also bears comparison with that of the tabloids in Britain. This is especially obvious when one of those stories that seem tailor-made for the newsweeklies comes along. The O.J. Simpson trial was such a story, because it gave the clerisy an excuse for endless discussions about race, class, sex, and celebrity in America. In fact, it could be said that the way was prepared for the jury’s verdict in Mr. Simpson’s criminal trial by over a year’s worth of schlock journalism devoted to