Leader of the Pack

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Tucked away on a quiet residential street in Lantana, Florida, the headquarters of one of the country's most successful weekly newspapers sits in an unassuming one-story concrete building next to a baseball field. Inside, the vast open space looks like many other newsrooms of fact and fiction. Only in the conference room does it become apparent that this is no ordinary news operation. One entire wall is devoted to the National Enquirer's biggest story ever: O.J. Simpson. Here they all are, covers from a mind-boggling 21 out of the past 27 issues, including NICOLE'S SECRET LIFE, O.J.'S KNIFE and the latest, a "computer re-creation" of BATTERED NICOLE.

When the bodies of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were discovered on June 13, National Enquirer editors must have thought they had died and gone to tabloid heaven. Enquirer staff members arrived on the scene outside Nicole's Brentwood home at about the same time as the Los Angeles coroner, and since then as many as 20 reporters have been running down everyone even tangentially connected to the case, dogging distant relatives for photos and dangling cash in front of household employees and store clerks. In fact the Enquirer has pursued the O.J. story so aggressively that it has in some instances become the story, posing ethical dilemmas for both the courts and the mainstream press.

In September, responding in part to the fact that some witnesses in the Simpson case sold their accounts to the Enquirer before testifying in court, California Governor Pete Wilson signed three new laws that went into effect Jan. 1, penalizing witnesses or jurors who sell information about a pending case. And last month, after a bit of the Enquirer's tabloid color seeped into the gray pages of the New York Times, the furor was sufficient to occupy O.J. watchers until the DNA hearings begin this week.

San Francisco bureau chief David Margolick, who is covering the case for the Times, wrote two articles in December about courtroom wrangles over a sheriff's deputy who claims to have overheard remarks Simpson made in a jailhouse conversation with former Los Angeles Rams lineman Roosevelt Grier, who is now a minister. Although the deputy was not permitted to state in court what he had heard, Margolick decided to quote the only previously published account of the remarks -- from the Dec. 20 issue of the Enquirer. "Simpson exclaimed, 'I did it!' " Margolick wrote, adding that "The Enquirer stands by its article, which it said was based on 'multiple independent sources.' "

Margolick defended his action by saying the Enquirer has had an accurate record on the O.J. case and that he left it to his readers to assess the veracity of the Enquirer's anonymous sources. But other journalists were outraged, though many newspapers and broadcasters repeated the disputed remark in the process of reporting the flap. "I can tell you I am far more offended by the New York Times' reliance on Enquirer reporting than I am by the Enquirer," says Jim Newton, who is covering the O.J. trial for the Los Angeles Times. Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics at Harvard University, sees the brouhaha as a sign that "the tide is running in the direction of lowest-common-denominator journalism, and that is very sad."

Unless, of course, you happen to work for the Enquirer. The Simpson story has raised the tab's circulation by 500,000 copies a week. The Times controversy, says general editor David Perel, who heads Team O.J., "is gratifying because other people are acknowledging what our readers have known all along -- that we're first with big stories and we're accurate." Not always: both sides in the Simpson case have, for example, denied the Enquirer's reports of ongoing plea-bargain negotiations. Enquirer copy is vetted by lawyers from the Washington firm of Williams and Connolly (including, on occasion, partner David Kendall, who is President Clinton's personal attorney). "When they put their minds to it," says partner Gerson Zweifach, "they do a good job."

It is a job more easily done, however, when reporters can throw money at sources. Though most journalists argue that paying for information taints the reliability of the source, the Enquirer has no such scruples. The paper's editor-in-chief, Iain Calder, will not say exactly how much, but a good portion of the annual $16 million editorial budget goes to keep the tab's informers talking. "But then you take these tips and you check them out," says Calder, "just like you check out any other story." And, insists senior reporter David Duffy, who says he knocked on some 200 doors to locate a former maid to Nicole Simpson, "We don't pay people to say what they don't know. We pay for exclusivity." The maid received $18,000 for her memories of Nicole's tempestuous relationship with O.J.

Soon, though, the best part of the story will be unfolding free of charge: in the courtroom. "When the trial starts," Enquirer assistant executive editor Steve Coz points out, "it's going to be just like reading a National Enquirer article."

With reporting by Tammerlin Drummond/Lantana, Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York