Society has stereotyped tabloid readers to be unintelligent, low-income, silly people. According to S. Bird ”For Enquirering Minds”, “An element in the stereotype of tabloid readers is that they are lonely misfits, shut-ins, or other people who lead sad lives.” (141) People don’t think that “normal people” read or believe in the tabloids, but that must not be the case. According to statistics compiled by Bird the combined weekly circulation of the six major supermarket tabloids during t

Another stereotype in the world of tabloids is that of the tabloid writer. People imagine tabloid writes as sleazy, slimy, pushy people, working in shabby offices, doing what ever it takes to dig up the dirt. When the tabloids were first established in the mid 1950’s this was somewhat true. Tabloid writers were working in garages and basements. Most were junkies or alcoholics, working for enough change for cigarettes or a beer. But, as time went on everything changed this. Bird states that “Tabloids are a multimillion-dollar industry, and the working conditions for their staff are more attractive then those of most newspaper journalists.” (79) Most tabloid

Studies were done by two groups of men, Salwen and Anderson (1984) and Lehnert and Perpich (1982) to try to uncover who tabloid readers actually are and why they enjoy reading the tabloids. Salwen and Anderson found that the “typical buyer” of the tabloids were mostly white, predominately female, middle-aged to older people. The majority reported a career in skilled or

heir peak in the 80’s rounded around ten million issues, with an estimated readership of fifty million. Fifty million Americans who were reading the tabloids cannot all be misfits or shut-ins. Obviously, tabloids are offering readers something they want. Despite this tabloids are still defined as the epitome of trash reading.

One of the biggest questions ever asked of tabloid readers is if they actually believe in that stuff. Lehnert and Perpich asked this question in their study of readers. They concluded that some readers - “selfish believers” as they labeled them, believe everything tabloids report as true, but mostly they find that readers allow tabloids to reinforce their existing beliefs and dismissing stories that they do not already have faith in. Bird sums up why readers read the tabloids by saying “Tabloids are most often one among many sources of information and enjoyment, and their significance in r

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