Report: Rehabbing Redmond rebels, refuses role in dad Ryan O'Neal's sequel to TV special about his mom Farrah Fawcett

Gossip man Mike Walker, who has pretty reliable sources, reports in this week's National Enquirer that "drug addict Redmond O'Neal" is "fed up with the money-grubbing exploitation of dead mom Farrah Fawcett by ruthlessly abusive dad Ryan O'Neal" and "finally exploded and refused to star in Ryan's sequel to Farrah's Story, the hit TV documentary that featured shocking footage of jailbird Redmond shuffling in shackles to Mommy's deathbed!"

Walker goes a step further by adding that "Redmond-- desperately fighting his drug habit in rehab-- blames Ryan for the vicious snub of Farrah by the Oscars, which cut her out of its In Memorium segment."

Ryan is quoted by a "friend visiting him in rehab":

"My dad's pissed off so many people in Hollywood that they're taking it out on my mother!"


Redmond reportedly believes his dad is "using poor Farrah's memory to grub for money he badly needs. Redmond got $4.5 million in Farrah's will-- but Ryan got zero."

According to one of Mike's insiders, Red's "residual anger" at that deathbed scene has built after "friends and fellow jailbirds convinced him that Ryan shouldn't have shot that embarrassing footage.

"And now that he's out of jail, he's told Ryan not to visit him in rehab."

Sound true?

Pulitzers accept National Enquirer noms

Congratulations to Tabloid Baby pal Barry Levine, executive editor of The National Enquirer and his team, as The Pulitzer Prize Board has officially accepted The Enquirer's submissions for breaking the John Edwards scandal.

The proud tabloid makes history being deemed qualified to compete with so-called "mainstream" news organization for journalism's tarnished yet most prestigious prize. The Enquirer is in the running for the Pulitzer in two categories: "Investigative Reporting" and "National News Reporting" for The National Enquirer staff.

A dark day for Sig Gissler

Readers of this site know that this is not the first time a tabloid organization has attenpted to be recognized by our ivy-walled, ivory tower fellow hacks.

Last April, Pulitzer gatekeeper Sig Gissler rejected our Pulitzer nominations for our coverage of the Israel Baseball League scandals out of hand, and in another history-making move, even returned our admission check-- repelled as he was by the "tabloid" moniker.

We're glad to have paid the price to pave the way.

The National Enquirer will enter John Edwards scandal coverage for a Pulitzer Prize: Well-deserved, but good luck getting past Sig Gissler!

The National Enquirer plans to enter its coverage of the John Edwards paternity scandal for a Pulitzer Prize.

"It's clear we should be a contender for this," executive editor and Tabloid Baby pal Barry Levine told the Washington Post today, after the former presidential candidate admitted what the newspaper had been reporting all along: that he fathered a child out of wedlock in an adulterous affair. "The National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid, was able to publish this reporting."


Levine, and the Enquirer undoubtedly deserve the Pulitzer. They championed the story. They dedicated the resources and moved forward against the lies and brickbats hurled their way, while the lazy, "mainstream" media fed off their scraps and covered the story from a distance until it was safe to go in for the kill and start buying up the players for headlines and morning show interviews.

Ultimately, we predict the Enquirer won't get a Pulitzer, most likely because old Sig Gissler, the Pulitzer prize administrator, probably won't even let the nomination reach the Prize Board.

Readers of this site will recall the uproar when Gissler screwed TabloidBaby.com and its correspondent Elli Wohlgelernter out of a Pulitzer when he rejected our nominations for the groundbreaking coverage of the Israel Baseball League scandals out of hand-- citing some technical clause for refusing to let the Pulitzer boardmembers decide for themselves.

Mr. Pulitzer may have been a tabloid king, but the Pulitzers' Ivy League ivory tower does not admit tabloid journos.

Correction: The Globe is the tabloid that picked up our story about steroids being suspected in the death of Danny Gans

Tabloid Baby pal Perez Hilton tipped us to a report in the National Enquirer (NOTE: Our report's been corrected) that friends and others close to Las Vegas superstar Danny Gans say they believe his use of steroids weakened his heart and led to his untimely, mysterious death at age 52 one month ago. A stop in the supermarket over the weekend revealed that Perez got his tabs confused. It was The Globe, not the Enquirer, that ran with our story 28 days later, in their latest issue (below).


The Enquirer, through its RadarOnline.com Internet arm, got onto the story May 11th.

The local Las Vegas media offered no coverage of Danny Gans' still-unexplained death (though Norm Clarke chased a rumour that Garth Brooks is being courted/courting to take Gans' spot at the Encore) as the mystery enters its fifth week.

Developing...

National Enquirer boosts American Dunkleman!

American Dunkleman, the new television comedy series created by our pals at Frozen Pictures got a huge boost this week as the National Enquirer is running a prominent story, spread over two pages, that not only promotes the show starring former American Idol host Brian Dunkleman, but gets in the comedic spirit and ratchets the satirical edge one step further!

Ex-'Idol' host resorts to begging
fans to help revive his career

runs the hilarious headline, which spins off the satirical Facebook group, "American Dunkleman is the next great television comedy," that's been promoting the proposed scripted series among the industry movers and shakers who communicate on the site.

The Enquirer article also gets to the heart of the series, which is a takeoff on Dunkleman's real-life plight of making "the biggest mistake in the history of show business," while at the same time showing off the actor's great acting and comedic skills.

"The Enquirer is the best," Burt Kearns, who created the series with fellow writer-producer Brett Hudson, tells us exclusively. "As a veteran of the tabloid industry, I appreciate the humour and spin of the headline-- it'll grab the millions of readers out there in America and will help them identify with the 'Brian Dunkleman' character in the series.

"I mean, it's genius. The Enquirer writes of Dunkleman's 'agony' and desperation when it's the producers who put up the Facebook site as a stunt! They're treating the star as if he's the character, like doing a story on Larry David as if he's really the guy in Curb Your Enthusiasm! Brilliant! Hey, we may even use the article in one of the episodes!"

The full article runs below-- as you can see above, they even showed the Facebook page.

As for the rest of Hollywood... stay tuned... after the release of the promotional trailer (below) led to a tremendous publicity blitz that included raves in places like the Los Angeles Times ("Hilarious!"), the Dunkleman series, including its pilot script, is just now beginning to be shopped.

Ex-'Idol' host resorts to begging
fans to help revive his career
Brian Dunkleman
still can't live down his
'biggest mistake'

FORMER "American idol" co-host Brian Dunkleman has gone from becoming a living room fixture in millions of American homes to begging fans to help him land a new TV show.

Dunkleman was Ryan Seacrest's sidekick when "Idol" debuted in 2002, but to his lasting regret, left the mega-hit s how after the first season. Now he's desperately seeking a new gig-- in a series about himself!

The title: "American Dunkleman"!

"Let's be honest-- I didn't think 'American Idol' would be successful. Had I known, I would have stayed," he told The ENQUIRER exclusively.

After the 37-year-old entertainer announced his departure, Simon Cowell declared Dunkleman had "made the biggest mistake in the history of show business."

In his drive to return to the spotlight, Dunkleman, who's found sporadic TV work, is opening up about his personal agony on the Web site Facebook.

"I'M TRYING TO GET FANS to support a new TV comedy series called 'American Dunkleman.'

"The show is based in how every day of my life I'm reminded of the biggest mistake I've ever made-- leaving 'Idol'-- and how I can't go anywhere without being reminded of that career decision.

"I'm appealng to members of Facebook in an attempt to get one million fans to support the show before we pitch it to the networks."

by LISA LUCHESI

Hey, LA Times! How about now?

The Hartford (CT) Courant: Tabloids Turning Mainstream

By MARY K. FEENEY; Courant Staff Writer

It's no big news when the National Enquirer splashes celebrity scandal across its cover. But when the tabloid scoops the mainstream media on national stories twice within several weeks, editors and reporters snap to envious attention.

The Enquirer broke a story in January about Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child (and another in the Feb. 27 issue about an additional affair). Last Friday, it printed the blockbuster that Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, received (and then returned) $400,000 for his help in two presidential pardons.

Enquirer editor Steve Coz was featured Sunday on CNN's ``Reliable Sources'' with Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, and the tabloid was featured in Kurtz's media column the next day. Several major news outlets, including USA Today and Salon.com, paid homage to the newspaper, which recently dished the dirt on the Anthony Hopkins-Martha Stewart romance.

But instead of admiration, perhaps the more appropriate emotion might be embarrassment.

``The thing is, the so-called mainstream media has a long history of having their cake and eating it, too, by allowing the so-called tabloid press to do their dirty work, investigating and putting stories out in the marketplace that mainstream media feels is beneath them,'' said Burt Kearns, former executive producer of ``A Current Affair'' and ``Hard Copy'' and creator of the tabloid news site www. tabloidbaby.com.

The Jackson story is one example. The Chicago and Washington media knew about it but didn't report on it.

``There are some stories they don't want to break. The Jesse Jackson love-child story was a totally legitimate story,'' Kearns said. ``Here was Jackson counseling Clinton during Monicagate, and setting the spin for the rest of the country as to how to behave. ... But they [the mainstream media] felt it was beneath them.''

At the same time, the mainstream media has been lurching toward a tabloid sensibility. So the Enquirer's recent exclusives are, in a way, doubly humbling for the traditional press, which finds itself reluctantly casting nets in the murky waters of gossip and getting whupped by its most notorious purveyor.

``On the other side, the National Enquirer is often the publication that gets it right. All of a sudden they were getting scooped by this trashy publication that was read mostly by ladies in trailer parks,'' said Jeannette Walls, MSNBC gossip columnist and author of ``Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip.'' Whether you approve of their methods, Enquirer reporters are skillfull and aggressive, and the paper has 25 people ``who fact-check stuff up the wazoo,'' Walls said.

The Enquirer is, in a way, a victim of its own success.

Walls said the trend toward tabloidism all began with the death of Elvis Presley in 1977, a moment when newspapers and magazines realized that to ignore Elvis was to lose readers.

``As more mainstream publications went tabloid, they started eating away at the National Enquirer readership. The more publications covering this turf, the less need there was for the National Enquirer,'' Walls said.

When the O.J. Simpson story broke, every news outlet was chasing it.

``It was sort of horrible for the folks at the National Enquirer trying to elbow aside The New York Times and ABC News. The sort of story that would have been exclusively the National Enquirer's turf was now in the mainstream media,'' Walls said.

As tabloid news osmosed into newspapers, television and the Internet, circulation at the Enquirer fell from its peak of about 6 million after Elvis' death (when the idol in his coffin graced the front page) to roughly 2.1 million today. Unlike many other publications, the Enquirer depends heavily on newsstand sales (19 percent of its circulation comes from subscribers, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures from June). And most issues are not fat with ads from major companies.

Now it appears the Enquirer is repositioning itself to recapture some of that circulation, with increased attention to political scandal.

In his CNN interview, Coz said that while the Enquirer has broken major political stories in the past (including those involving the Donna Rice-Gary Hart affair and Lewinskygate), it is ``walking in the direction of mainstream journalism in that mainstream journalism spends a lot of time and energy covering Washington. And between that and Bill Clinton, Washington politicians are now celebrities.''

``We are putting a big, big push on Washington, and we have two stories in development right now,'' Coz told Kurtz.

Coz, asked whether checkbook journalism figured in the Jackson or Rodham stories, replied that it was not ``the driving force. We do pay for information. In this particular case, the payments were not made to anybody that was a principle source.''

In an interview with USA Today, Coz said that many reporters grease the skids by buying dinner for sources. ``We just skip the dinner,'' he said.

For the great majority of journalists, paying for information is a line that cannot be crossed.

``There's a very big difference between paying cash to sources for information and the practice of reporters picking up the tab at dinner when they talk with their sources,'' said Robert M. Steele, a senior faculty member and ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute.

``I do believe that anytime we pay sources, we create at least the perception of an eroded credibility,'' Steele said. ``And it raises natural questions as to whether people are giving information for their own purposes that is tainted by motives that include financial gain.''

Kearns and others said that viewpoint may be a little naive today.

``I think that's great when you're blowing dust off volumes in an ivory tower. But right now, news information is a product, whether you're on Page One of the Washington Post or being featured on '60 Minutes.'''

And the Enquirer hasn't been alone in offering incentives for news.

``I think the mainstream press has paid for news for a long time in ways they will not acknowledge. '60 Minutes' has a long history of paying for stories, but they hide it. They will pay the lawyer [for a source] as a consulting fee,'' said Walls.

Payoffs aside, the Enquirer has gained a measure of respect for breaking the stories and is probably being read in more newsrooms than ever. But will it ever, or should it ever, change its spots?

``I think the National Enquirer can do great work, but it's very hard for any publication to reposition itself,'' Walls said. ``The National Enquirer is kind of synonymous with sleazy tabloid journalism, whether or not it deserves that label ... .

``It's a little bit like saying you're a clean wrestler, but that's not going to do you any good,'' said Walls.