Popular Culture Review 30.2
THE AMI ERA
David J . Pecker , born in 1952 , was the son of a bricklayer from the Bronx . He graduated from Pace University in business administration and passed the CPA exam . After a succession of accounting jobs in the media business , he , along with investors from the Evercore Corporation , purchased the publishing conglomerate American Media Incorporated ( AMI ) in 1999 for $ 850 million . He became chairman , president , and chief executive officer of the company . He oversees a collection of more than a dozen magazines and newspapers including the National Enquirer , Star , US Weekly , Globe , OK !, and several men ’ s fitness magazines .
In a June 20 , 2018 article in the New Daily , Larry Hackett , former editor of People , reported AMI ’ s acquisition of 13 gossip and celebrity magazines owned by a German firm , Bauer Media . AMI now owns every tabloid on the rack in the supermarket , except for People . Hackett worried that a company that controls so many different magazines with an estimated readership of 38 million people has unprecedented power to influence the electorate . He warned that it was time to take the tabloid / celebrity magazine industry seriously ( Hackett para . 14 ).
ANALYSIS OF THE ENQUIRER
Pecker portrays the image of a bon vivant , but at heart , he is a clever bookkeeper trying to stave off further losses in an overcrowded and declining magazine sector . The Enquirer sold an average of 4.5 million copies a week in the 1980s . Five people read each issue sold , meaning almost 25 million people read it every week , more than 10 % of the US population ( Connolly para . 2 ). Today , one can read celebrity gossip at TMZ . com on the Internet or watch it on television .
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