The National Enquirer and the publication’s longtime practice of “catch and kill” — buying, then burying, unsavory stories about powerful people — is at the center of New York’s criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump.
But the tabloid’s new publisher says those kinds of hush-money payments are no longer part of the Enquirer’s business.
“Look, it’s a new day,” said Ted Farnsworth, an entrepreneur whose firm, Icon Publishing, was part of a group that purchased the National Enquirer in February. “I don’t even understand how ‘catch and kill’ works, because I don’t come from publishing, but I just know I don’t want it around.”
During an hourlong interview, Mr. Farnsworth, 60, distanced the tabloid from the tactics practiced by the Enquirer’s previous leadership. He said David Pecker, the former publisher of the tabloid and a key player in the hush-money scheme laid out by prosecutors this week, was no longer involved with the day-to-day operations. The tabloid still pays for stories, he said, but tipsters aren’t paid until their information is published — a practice meant to reveal rather than conceal information.
Mr. Farnsworth said he was focused on mining the Enquirer’s nearly century-old archives for stories that could be converted into new TV shows, movies and podcasts. And he said the publication’s coverage would focus less on politics and more on celebrity stories.
“From the vaults of The National Enquirer, did Elvis really die in the mansion or did he die in a hotel in Mississippi?” Mr. Farnsworth said.
“Inquiring minds want to know,” he added, invoking the publication’s decades-old slogan.
In the indictment charging Mr. Trump that was unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors said that the former president falsified business records related to hush-money payments made to avoid negative press during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Pecker played a role in each of the payments to the three people cited by prosecutors.
Mr. Farnsworth said he did not think that the recent swirl of stories about Mr. Trump and the tabloid would have a negative impact on the company’s business. The National Enquirer is not legally liable for actions taken before the tabloid was purchased this year, he said.
This is the first foray into publishing for Mr. Farnsworth, who is perhaps best known for funding MoviePass, the failed subscription service that allowed customers to see a movie a day in theaters. The company surged in popularity before the pandemic, drawing millions of users — and at one point losing $20 million a month — before it went belly up.
Last year, the Justice Department accused Mr. Farnsworth of defrauding MoviePass investors, saying he made misrepresentations that artificially inflated the price of the parent company’s stock. Mr. Farnsworth has pleaded not guilty, and declined to comment on the case in the interview.
Mr. Farnsworth said that Icon Publishing and another investor, Vinco Ventures, paid less than $100 million for the Enquirer. Last year, he said, the publication generated about $13.5 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA. He said that the hand-wringing in the publishing industry over the extinction of print publications is out of step with the reality at the Enquirer, which is still popular with readers in newsstands and in stores including Walmart and Dollar General.
“You always hear ‘print is dead, print is dead,’” Mr. Farnsworth said. “Print is not dead.”
But he is also trying to expand the publication’s digital business. The Enquirer’s website hasn’t been updated with news in a year, which Mr. Farnsworth attributed to a long-in-the-making digital revamp that he says will be completed soon. Mr. Farnsworth said he was also continuing strategies intended to capitalize on the Enquirer’s ubiquitous eye-level supermarket racks, including giving away a new Corvette through the print newspaper using a scannable “QR” code.
The shift away from politics coverage is a major break from the history of the National Enquirer, where campaign coverage has been a mainstay.
That reporting has inspired caution among presidential candidates. In 2016, Mr. Trump and his then lawyer Michael Cohen discussed a plan to buy a cache of sensitive information gathered by National Enquirer journalists about Mr. Trump. That plan didn’t result in a deal, and Mr. Farnsworth said he didn’t receive any damaging information about Mr. Trump when an 18-wheeler delivered boxes of the Enquirer’s archived records to the tabloid’s Syracuse studios this year.
That strategy about covering politics also extends to the case against Mr. Trump. Though the Manhattan courtroom was packed with reporters on Tuesday for Mr. Trump’s arraignment, Mr. Farnsworth said that The National Enquirer planned to leave daily coverage of the story to other publications.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
