Inside the Globe.

• Author: SHAPIRO, JEFFREY SCOTT
• Position: Tabloid newspaper reporting

A tabloid reporter who taped his bosses tells all

Brian Williams, the Globe's executive editor, told me they would start me out at $150 a day and rent me a brand new car and an apartment. At age 23, I didn't hesitate. "When can you leave?" Williams asked me. I considered my financial situation and said, "How about two hours?"

It was March 1997, and my destination was Boulder, Colorado--home of JonBenet Ramsey, the angelic six year-old who had been found sexually molested and murdered three months earlier. The Globe and its fellow tabloids had been covering the case obsessively, convinced that this was the story that would reverse their decline in circulation--especially if they could finger the killer.

Before I left the Globe's concrete fortress--guarded by a golden statue of Atlas, secured by glass doors, electronic key cams, and hovering video-cameras--there was one last detail. After leaving the room, Williams returned with a contract which contained a confidentiality agreement prohibiting me from revealing information about their methods of information gathering. If I violated it, the penalty was $20,000 for "each and every violation." Williams didn't say anything, but his smile read, We've got you.

I arrived in Boulder a few days later, where I met my contact, Craig Lewis. Lewis was a general editor for the Globe and had been the National Enquirer's star reporter during the Simpson case in Los Angeles. Immediately, Lewis explained how he planned to use the same methods that had worked for tabloid reporters during the Simpson trial--payoffs to housekeepers and police secretaries, and finding friends of the accused who would betray them. Already, the Globe had been villified for publishing stolen crime-scene photos, including one of JonBenet's lifeless hand hanging off the coroner's stretcher.

It didn't take me long to develop a relationship with Boulder's District Attorney, Alex Hunter, as well as the Boulder Police Department's lead detective, Steve Thomas. Occasionally, I discovered a few facts that could be transformed into big headlines with the help of phrases like, "cops probe," "sources say," and "investigators' shocking new scenario." I soon realized that the tabloids could write virtually any story they wanted to as long as someone with authority would say it was possible. In fact, when real information was scarce, my editors would often ask me to engage Hunter or Thomas in a conversation just to lure them into saying, "Yeah, you never know, anything's possible, man?' With that, add a pinch and a dash of what Lewis called "Tabloid Magic," and the investigators were considering a shocking new scenario.

Sometimes it wasn't so easy. Occasionally, even Hunter and Thomas didn't want to admit that certain possibilities were within the realm of reality. That's when Lewis turned to his "sources," which consisted of a former prosecutor who loved getting his name in the papers and a former police detective who was sour with his department. For a couple of C-notes a week, both of these characters would allow the Globe to use them as "sources." In other words, the Globe fabricated quotes and scenarios and then got the OK from their "sources," who would concede they were "possible," and boom! The next Globe cover story emerged.

I soon became aware of some of the Globe's other methods of obtaining stories. My own techniques with law enforcement had been to bring them information, unconditionally, with hopes for an occasional reward. Others, however, had no such patience. "Call every one of these numbers and just ask them if they're interested in talking to me," one editor told me as he handed me a list of sheriff's deputies who worked in the Boulder county jail. He was hoping one of them would be willing to give the Globe a heads up as to when the Ramseys would be arrested. "Why would anyone want to risk their job by talking to a tabloid?" I asked. Because I could buy them a brand new Mercedes, responded the editor. On another occasion two Globe reporters went to the home of a handwriting expert in Evergreen, Colo. with $30,000 in cash, in an effort...