In the '70s and '80s, the National Enquirer went from a negligible gross-out rag (circulation: 700,000) to a major news source for over six million readers. Under the leadership of editor Iain Calder, who emigrated to New York from Scotland in 1966 to work for the magazine, its malaise-stricken staff was transformed into a hop-any-fence, bribe-any-source battalion of reporters. Calder pioneered a new kind of journalism that placed celebrities inside the twenty-four-hour fishbowl of surveillance that we take for granted today. Hairdressers, bartenders and siblings were bribed with wads of cash. Fake priests giving last rites were outfitted with tiny hidden cameras.

The upshot was thousands of stories of varying veracity, and while the magazine certainly dropped the ball many times, they also ran several mostly accurate scoops that any paper would have killed for. They coaxed the confession from John Belushi's drug dealer that led to her conviction for manslaughter. They discovered crucial clues in the O.J. Simpson case that the police had missed, and even corrected inaccurate reporting of the case in other major publications. In 1987, the magazines published the infamous "Monkey Business" photo of Gary Hart with model Donna Rice perched on his lap. The photo led to the end of Hart's presidential bid, which led to the beginning of Michael Dukakis's, which, one could argue, led to George H.W. Bush's election — which led to his son's. For better or worse, the tawdry gossip sheet may have changed the course of history. Calder, now retired and living scandal-free in Boca Raton, spoke to Hooksexup about how it was done. — Will Doig

Most people assume that celebrities hate the National Enquirer, but actually they've often worked in concert with the magazine to put together certain stories.
Sure. They'd work with us behind the scenes, get their faces on the cover, then go to their cocktail parties and say, "I don't know how that rotten rag got that story." We ran a front-page picture of Michael Jackson sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber. We got sent the picture by one of his representatives. He said, "He sleeps in there because he thinks he's going to live past one hundred." I looked at the picture, and I said, "That looks like Michael Jackson, but I can't tell if it's really Michael Jackson. This guy is probably sending us a phony picture." Sometimes people would try to catch us on various things so they could say, "Look, the Enquirer is false!" So I said, "Send me another picture where I can really see it's Michael Jackson." Well, a few days later I get another picture of Michael. He'd climbed back into that box and got his picture taken again.

And you ran it.
We ran it, under two conditions from Michael's people: it had to be front page, and we had to use the word "bizarre." Because that was his shtick at the time: Michael is bizarre. So we ran it with the story. We said "bizarre." The whole bit. And it sold very well. Then Michael went on television and said, "How did they get that picture? Yes, I was in there, but I don't sleep in it, blah blah blah . . ."

Above, Iain Calder; below, the infamous photo of Elvis Presley's corpse.

Did that annoy you?
We weren't angry in the slightest. At our height in the mid '80s, when we'd come out with a big story about some star sleeping with his children's seventeen-year-old babysitter or something, they'd come out and say, "This is not true, we're going to sue them!" Meanwhile, their PR people are like, "All right! We made the Enquirer!"

What do you think of the newer celebrity magazines like Star and Us Weekly? Did the Enquirer lay the groundwork for them?
Of course. You could make the case that the Enquirer single-handedly created our celebrity culture. The Enquirer did two things. We were the first to break into supermarkets. When I first visited America in 1965, you could go into a supermarket and all you'd see was TV Guide and a couple of magazines that the stores had started like Family Circle. The second thing was, we discovered TV. The print media hated TV because it was stealing their advertisers, and so they blasted it. They were like, if you watch The Beverly Hillbillies, you're a cretin. So we did stories from psychologists saying things like, "Watching TV is good for your kids." You know, if you make sure they're watching the right programs and taking these messages from Father Knows Best and blah blah blah. And people felt good when they read that. The other print media was making them feel guilty. So our circulation was zooming, and others followed suit. Time took their "People" column and turned it into People magazine. The New York Times started Us magazine — I bet you didn't know that.

But now it seems like movie stars are the most popular cover choice again with the new celebrity magazines.
No, no, no. It's still television, it just happens that movie stars are on television now. People are watching DVDs and things. These movie stars have become television stars. It's all about what people watch in their homes.

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the Enquirer and its newer, glossier progeny is that the Enquirer did serious reporting and the new magazines mostly run photos and captions.
Almost nobody is really breaking stories anymore. At the zenith, I had sixty incredibly great reporters making more money than the people at the New York Times. I had a thousand stringers all over the world. My budget in the late '80s was $18 million, which I'm guessing is $40 million today. I'd say the budget of most of these magazines today is under $10 million. If there was a major celebrity on a major show, I had tipsters in place. They might be a sister, might be someone working in her agent's office, at least three or four people on the set watching what's going on — all tipping us off. We had infiltrated Hollywood. We had spies everywhere. And if something happened, we'd get four phone calls within ten minutes. But it cost a lot of money.