Dear reader,

This week, the Nassau Weekly goes full tabloid. We embrace the scandalous, fixate on morbidity, and bury our noses into the low-brow formats of quiz and forum.

When the tabloid began to roll off the presses, it tried to bring in a wider audience by condensing stories through simplified, abbreviated sentences, eye-catching photographs, and sensational stories. Publications like The Daily Mail or the New York Post carried the format into a political era, disseminating the opinions of its increasingly right-wing owners. For the past three decades, tabloids have joined the decline in readership that has afflicted the rest of the industry. Yet they are more threatened than their more reputable peers, as electronic media allows for increasingly elaborate mechanisms of click-bait, gossip, and outrage.

And yet tabloids have survived. Case in point: the New York Post is the third largest newspaper by print in the country. Battered by the brutalities of a shrinking industry, the tabloid has found ways to adapt— for good or for ill.

It’s hard to satirically approach a medium that continually outdoes itself. But this week, the Nass takes another look at the tabloid in recognition of its stubbornness. We don’t know why it’s so fun to be evil, but we might as well give it a try.

Sensationally yours,

Alex Norbrook and Frankie Solinsky Duryea