But don't go mourning the death of the king of the tabloids just yet! David Pecker, chief of American Media, claims his company will stand tall, shed debt and make it out of the darkness in 60 days. AMI will file for Chapter 11 within the next two weeks, Kelly writes. 

So, you're among Pecker's cadre of writers for some crazy reason? You should be in the clear! If the deal holds up, "all employees, vendors and other creditors will be paid 100 percent on the dollar." Devotees of the Enquirer's relentless brand of "journalism," then, should be able to rest easy knowing that this stuff will stay on newsstands.

In addition to its bread and butter of fat celebrity pictures and death-mongering, the Enquirer played a key role in breaking the story of the lovechild of John Edwards and mistress Rielle Hunter. And they were almost sort-of considered for a Pulitzer! 

Intrepid political investigation, however, is not always the paper's forte. The headlines on the tabloid's website today include "LISA MARIE MELTDOWN," "HOPELESS O.J. SUICIDAL" and "HIDDEN HORRORS: WHEN JESUS WAS A VAMPIRE!"

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Here are some of the prospective tenants we reported on, including retail and office, and what happened to them. They were selected at random from our archives (which you can find in total at Observer.com/Prospective-Tenants), and we think we did pretty damn good.

We reported, you decided.

VIEW SLIDESHOW >Prospective Tenants: The Scorecard SLIDESHOW

The New York Post's Lois Weiss reported rumors of the move earlier this month, and The Commercial Observer's Jotham Sederstrom confirmed the move during his reporting for a profile of James Emden of Colliers International, one of the brokers on the deal. (The profile will be published Tuesday.)

"I think they're going to put us down by the water," National Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine said in a recent GQ article that described the publisher's current One Park digs as akin to a FEMA trailer. "By the wharf. Where the rats are even bigger."

tacitelli@observer.com

I refer here to the anonymous Iranian upon whom, last week, was bestowed a George Polk Award, one of journalism’s top honors, for the video he or she captured of a female protester as she died from a sniper’s bullet during last year’s Green Revolution. The woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, instantly became a national martyr and international cause célèbre. The identity of the individual who immortalized her death—described in the citation as “a brave bystander with a cell-phone camera”—is still unknown, but there’s no reason to think he/she was anything other than a civilian.

The selection was received as a statement—about the democratization that needs to happen in Iran, yes, but also about the democratization and decentralization that’s already happening in the news business. At the risk of giving too much credit to a bunch of awards-committee grandees, there’s an important lesson here. In the latter half of the last century, journalism mutated from a relatively prestige-free trade into a hoity-toity profession that, like medicine and law, involves graduate degrees and six-figure salaries. But journalism is not a profession, or even a trade, really. It’s an act. And anyone who performs that act is, at that moment, a journalist.

>>RELATED: TIMES, HUFFPO EXPAND UNPAID WORKFORCE

This recognition comes as the journalistic establishment slides beneath the water line, taking with it the six-figure jobs necessary to pay off all those J-school loans. And the people benefiting from this aren’t just the amateurs. It’s no coincidence that in the same week Neda’s videographer got his due, the Pulitzer Prize committee reportedly agreed to accept a submission from The National Enquirer for its reporting on John Edwards’ extramarital monkeyshines. Tabloid reporters are historically the untouchables of the journalistic caste system, too sullied by the trash-sifting work they do to move anywhere but down the food chain. But that was in the old days, when the logo on your business card meant a damn.

In essence, the market for acts of journalism has gone from a cartel-based system to something approximating free enterprise, where it’s the value of the goods themselves that matters, not the reputation of the vendor. That, in itself, is a great thing. But it has some unnerving implications. Start-ups like Demand Media and Associated Content are taking the free-market ethos to its logical conclusion, producing content based on algorithms that calculate consumer demand and sourcing the production to a far-flung network of low-paid freelancers. (AOL, my primary employer, has a venture called Seed that operates on similar principles.) To say that professional journalists are skeptical that such “robo-content” can ever replace the work of experienced full-timers is a vast understatement. But plenty of smart people think otherwise. Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, tells me she believes the new-breed content farmers could do to legacy media companies what the Japanese did to American automakers in the 1980s, undermining their economics forever. “Demand is well positioned to migrate up market with their content as Toyota did with their car models,” Morgan says. “That’s where things could get interesting for the established brands.”

As someone who’s still using his old-media salary to pay off school loans, I hope Morgan’s wrong. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Jeff Bercovici is the media columnist for AOL’s Daily Finance.

More from Jeff Bercovici:

A.D.D. Men

Tablets from Above

His 2004 primary bid, which peaked with his strong second-place showing in the lead-off Iowa caucuses, ended with wide agreement among activists and party leaders that his Southern roots, working-class appeal, and powerful communication skills would make him the ideal running mate for John Kerry, who finally gave in and offered Edwards his No. 2 slot. And when the Kerry-Edwards ticket went down to defeat in November - a loss that may have been aided by Edwards' inexplicably underwhelming performance in his debate against Dick Cheney - Edwards largely got a pass, with many in the party arguing that the outcome would have been different if the ticket had simply been reversed. And then there was this year's Democratic race, in which Edwards again reached his zenith in Iowa but exited the race a hero to the netroots and the clear choice of many activists for the VP slot or a prominent role (attorney general?) in a Democratic administration next year.

Now, though, the National Enquirer, whose initial report last December set about the chain of events that produced Edwards' admission on Friday of an extramarital affair, has done what three failed national campaigns couldn't by ending Edwards' future in national politics. The catch is: Edwards doesn't seem to realize it yet.

In a statement released late Friday afternoon, hours before a pre-taped interview with ABC News was scheduled to air, Edwards copped to an affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker and former campaign worker, "for a short period in 2006" but denied that he had fathered her child, something the Enquirer first alleged last December. His lengthy statement, though, feels far more political than confessional.

Most notably, Edwards characterized his previous responses to the Enquirer's reporting - which have generally involved him sneering at reporters who have asked about it and branding the allegations "tabloid trash" - as "99 percent honest." His own top supporters don't seem to agree. David Bonior, the former House Democratic Whip who managed the Edwards campaign this year, was quoted saying his boss had "betrayed" those who supported him.

It's certainly true that sex scandals aren't the automatic political career-killers that they used to be. Case in point: Bill Clinton, who denied his affair with Monica Lewinsky with the same straight-faced fervor that Edwards mustered to shoot down the Enquirer's story. But that doesn't mean they still can't be deadly, as Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey and Larry Craig can all attest. Determining whether a scandal is fatal is much more an art than a science.

Just consider the very similar cases of Spitzer and David Vitter, both of whom acknowledged paying prostitutes for sex. The factual differences between their cases were technical (Spitzer's prostitute had crossed state lines to join him, a violation of an obscure and rarely invoked federal statute, while Vitter's hadn't), but morally, their crimes were equal. While the clamor for Spitzer to resign was immediate, universal and overwhelming, Vitter was able to wait the firestorm out and then return to his day-to-day life as a U.S. senator.

Similarly, Edwards - as long as his denial about fathering Hunter's child is truthful - is guilty of the same moral crime as Clinton, committing adultery and then lying about it. But for subjective reasons, Edwards will almost certainly pay a much higher price than Clinton.

One difference is that when the Lewinsky scandal broke, the public was already predisposed to view Clinton as a playboy. From the day the Gennifer Flowers scandal broke in the 1992 campaign, Clinton's image as a smooth-talking good ol' boy with an eye for the ladies became fixed in popular culture. The Lewinsky scandal may have caught voters by surprise, but Clinton's conduct was entirely consistent with their long-standing assessment of him and his character.

Jokes about Edwards' sexual appetite, by contrast, have never been a staple of late-night comedy. That he'd cheat on his wife is a revelation to most voters. Moreover, the Edwardses, unlike the Clintons (who always acknowledged that their marriage had been rocky), have actively promoted their supposedly blissful partnership. And Edwards' own message, very much unlike Clinton's, is heavily tinged with morality. Like a modern-day William Jennings Bryan, he turned his campaigns (especially this year's) into moral crusades, linking his commitment to the poor, downtrodden and forgotten to his Christian faith (and also often noting that his faith had made it a struggle for him to support gay rights). While Edwards hasn't advocated sexual Puritanism, his holier-than-thou tone opens him to charges of hypocrisy.

There are other reasons to believe that he is done politically. Lying so convincingly for the past eight months lends lasting credibility to the charge that Edwards is little more than a packaged, silver-tongued trial lawyer. Plus, his willingness to let his top aides and supporters speak up in his defense reflects horribly on his character. Clinton had an ineffable warmth that prompted many people to overlook similar conduct. Edwards, as articulate as he is, simply doesn't have the same ability.

And then there's the issue of Elizabeth Edwards. In his statement, Edwards suggested that he had already confessed the affair to his wife and that she had forgiven him - long before the Enquirer story broke, and before her breast cancer returned early last year. Perhaps she will back him up on this publicly, and perhaps she won't. It really doesn't matter. Even before this scandal, she had become one of the more sympathetic figures on the national stage, widely admired for the grace and resolve she has shown in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis. Even if she publicly forgives him, Edwards will long be haunted by the perception that he betrayed his cancer-stricken wife.

One of his major strengths (at least within the Democratic Party) was always his perceived electability. That is now gone.

In the immediate future, the talk of Edwards as attorney general in an Obama administration is dead - not because the Senate would reject his nomination, but simply because no incoming president would willingly bring upon himself the media firestorm that would attend an Edwards appointment. Longer term, any return to politics in North Carolina, where Democrats have to be near-perfect simply to have a chance at winning, seems out of the question.

Edwards' political appeal was rooted in his ability to turn a policy matter into a moral issue and to rouse his audience into action. That's all gone now.

* The original version of this post failed to take into account Edwards' post-withdrawal victory on April 17, 2004 in his home state of North Carolina.

Earlier today, we reported that ABC News' chief investigative reporter Brian Ross was working on a story about John Edwards' alleged affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter.

Now, you can strike "alleged" from the record.

Mr. Ross and producer Rhonda Schwartz just posted an article on ABC's "The Blotter," under the blockbuster headline, "Edwards Admits Sexual Affair; Lied as Presidential Candidate."

According to the post, Mr. Edwards made the admission in an interview with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, which will air tonight on Nightline. At the same time, Mr. Edwards denied to ABC that he was the father of Ms. Hunter's baby girl.

"John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today," reports ABC News. "In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her."

"Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test," add Mr. Ross and Ms. Schwartz. "Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby's birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father."

For weeks, members of the media meta-sphere have been debating about whether the MSM should follow up on the numerous stories in The National Enquirer, alleging that Mr. Edwards has fathered an out-of-wedlock child with filmmaker Rielle Hunter.

"I think the mainstream media is right to be cautious with this story," Brent Cunningham, managing editor of The Columbia Journalism Review, recently told The Hartford Courant. "I think they're good at what [The National Enquirer] do. ... They make sure their stories are legally airtight, but I don't know if that qualifies them to be a source to follow."

Recently, a number of influential writers including Mickey Kaus of Slate and Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star have argued in favor of news organizations (and Mr. Edwards himself) addressing the story. That ABC News' top investigative team has now deemed the story worthy of reporting on may signal that the rest of the mega fauna in the American media may be at last turning their attention to the unsavory subject of the alleged child and the alleged affair.

"Sure, it's distasteful," wrote Tom Bemis is MarketWatch on Thursday, Aug. 7, in a piece arguing for the story's legitimacy as a news topic. "That's one of the reasons it's news. But The National Enquirer owns the Edwards love child story the way The Washington Post owned Watergate."

Apparently, Mr. Ross and his colleagues at ABC News—who in recent years have broken big stories on everything from covert C.I.A. prisons, to campaign-finance reform, to Congressman Mark Foley's lecherous instant messaging—now want a piece of the story.

No word yet on when Mr. Ross' investigation might land on his ABC Web site, The Blotter, or on other ABC News programs. And of course, given the ethically complicated and empirically hazy subject matter, it's possible the reporting will never make it past ABC's lawyers and standard czars or get scooped by another reporter.

Last night, Dog put out his own apologetic statement, according to the Associated Press.

"I did not mean to add yet another slap in the face to an entire race of people who have brought so many gifts to this world," he said, according to the AP. "I am ashamed of myself and I pledge to do whatever I can to repair this damage I have caused."

Where will Dog turn when it comes time for his inevitable self restoration project? Our guess: Glenn Beck's show on CNN Headline News. Over the past year or so, Mr. Beck has made Dog a recurring guest, and has developed a particularly good on-air rapport with the God-fearing, advice-spewing, bounty hunter. In the meantime, we left a message with Dog’s people, seeking further comment. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.

Back in 1995, arguing against liberal leniency toward dope fiends, Mr. Limbaugh endorsed the boilerplate ideology and draconian methods of the drug war with baritone bombast. "Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country," he intoned. "And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

Displaying characteristic conservative empathy, he dismissed data showing that blacks are punished more predictably and more severely than whites for similar narcotics offenses. Such statistics are meaningless, he said; all those studies prove is that "too many whites are getting away with drug use." According to him, the proper solution is not to treat addiction among all ethnic groups as a disease rather than a crime, but to arrest more white offenders-and, of course, to "convict them and send them up the river, too."

Eight years later, Mr. Limbaugh's "talent on loan from God" has suddenly collided with instant karma. If the story that his former housekeeper told (or sold) to the National Enquirer is true, then by his own standards El Rushbo himself should be headed "up the river" for a spell. His admitted abuse of Oxycontin, a federally controlled opiate used by millions of patients for the relief of disabling pain, was plainly illegal, as were his alleged purchases of thousands of the little "blue babies."

Luckily for him, however, criminal prosecution is unlikely, despite the e-mails, voice messages and other evidence his dealer reportedly kept. To be indicted and convicted of drug offenses, he would have to be caught in red-handed possession of his stash. And the credibility of his accusers in court would be nil-not only because they sold their tale to the tabloid, but also because of their own obvious criminal liability.

Legal experts in Florida agree that Mr. Limbaugh's high-priced Miami attorney, Roy Black (best known for defending William Kennedy Smith and Marv Albert), has little reason to worry that his celebrity client will do time.

So whatever punishment Mr. Limbaugh must endure will be handed down in the court of public opinion. He enjoys the support of millions of character witnesses, including prominent fellow hypocrites such as his close friends William Bennett and Newt Gingrich. But they would all be hard-pressed to describe the mighty radio mouth as someone who has earned great sympathy. This is, after all, a man who earned millions by lampooning the plight of AIDS victims, spreading rumors that implicated Hillary Clinton in murder and Bill Clinton in cocaine abuse, and mocking the physical appearance of their young child. His brilliant career was founded on daily "entertainment" of this quality.

Mr. Limbaugh specialized in legitimizing the denigration of the least fortunate. "The poor in this country are the biggest piglets at the mother pig and her nipples," he complained. "And I'm sick and tired of playing the one phony game I've had to play, and that is this so-called compassion for the poor. I don't have compassion for the poor." Not even a hungry child or an unemployed father or an ill elderly woman was deemed by the great conservative guru to be deserving of his sympathy.

With that grim record, Mr. Limbaugh now presents a real challenge to liberal compassion. Rather than the cruel "joking" he might well have inflicted on an opponent in his situation, that challenge should be met with sincere wishes for his recovery and rehabilitation.

But what would rehabilitation mean? In the statement he released last week, Mr. Limbaugh said his addiction had grown from a prescription of pain medication. By proffering that explanation, he only demonized effective medicines that rarely cause problems for the millions who badly need effective opiates to relieve disabling agony. Both he and the nation would be better off if he resolved instead to deal with the real problems that afflict him.

According to his biographers, Mr. Limbaugh has always been a terribly insecure and often lonely man. His chronic projection of rage against women, gays, blacks, liberals, Democrats and others is a symptom. Addiction is a psychiatric diagnosis, which most often occurs in people who medicate themselves to relieve psychic pain. His repeated failures to conquer his drug dependency suggest that he has yet to obtain the kind of therapy he needs.

While he examines his issues in seclusion over the next month or so, he might also ponder the social injustices of the drug war. Wealthy and well-connected junkies like Mr. Limbaugh get treatment and prayers; poor and obscure junkies get prison and scorn. Even a dittohead should be able to understand why that is wrong.

summer. It's that time of the year, in early August, when all that surrounds us

is in full bloom. The garden is ripe. The vegetation is lush. And for a moment,

just a moment, at dusk nature itself seems to pause and sigh, catching its

breath, as if to say that God's work here on earth is finished, forever.

It is a time to count our blessings.

Let us, for example, give thanks that none of our daughters,

or friends, has decided to become a Washington

intern. And let none of us look

askance at Monica, or Chandra, or even Heidi Fleiss, and ask, "Hey, what exactly

is up with all of these Jewish doctors' daughters from California,

anyway?"

Let us give thanks that we refrained from buying that

converted loft just north of Chelsea,

for lo, it appears that the real-estate market truly has peaked.

Let us give thanks that we are not as doltish as Senate

Majority Leader Tom Daschle thinks, with his ridiculous,

smirking assertion before the television cameras during the week of Aug. 1 that

"I haven't discussed Gary Condit with any of my colleagues."

Let us give thanks that if Michael Bloomberg's stalled

campaign for Mayor teaches us anything, it is that Jon Corzine was an anomaly,

and that it is still easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than

for a rich man to buy his way into public office in America.

And let us not look upon Rudy Giuliani with scorn, at least

not for now, as we ponder whether he might be next in line to be cited for one

of his infamous "quality-of-life" violations, given the petty crimes he's

committed against his family. And let us not wonder-or even begin to

speculate-about the kind of emotional graffiti that defaces the darker corners

of his heart.

Yes, it is high summer in America:

a time to rejoice, to sing the praises of our bounty.

Let us give thanks for Al Gore's newly grown beard and for

Charlie Rangel's endless hyperventilating on television. For if nothing else,

they remind us of the genius of Chuck Jones' Warner Brothers cartoons, where

both men would seem to be right at home alongside Yosemite Sam and the Road

Runner.

Let us not castigate those men of a certain age who now

claim that "I was too young to remember the first days of MTV," when we are

fully aware they had a crush on Martha Quinn in 1982. For lo, they are

suffering from a dreaded midlife crisis that no Wu-Tang Clan logo-bearing

baseball cap will ever be able to cover.

Let us take pity on Tina Brown, whose

juvenile-no, make that grasping-attempt to create buzz for Talk magazine by publishing a fashion spread with models portraying

the Bush daughters in jail will certainly be seen for what it is:

Grasping, transparent, venal and

unnecessary.

For surely, even as she tries to turn the magazine into a

slick-paper version of The National

Enquirer , the real target here is George W. It's bias and bad taste rolled

into one: For we all know that three summers ago, she would never have run a

picture of a model portraying Chelsea-in Jimmy Choo shoes-about to walk in on

her father getting a blowjob in the Oval Office.

Yes, let us give thanks for all these things, and more.

Let us take joy in the efficiency and compassion of Dick

Cheney's health plan; and let us pray that someday all Americans-and not just

the Vice President-are covered by an H.M.O. that never raises questions about

the cost.

Let us not condemn the self-promoting souls who found it so

vitally imperative to write those "we were incredibly close" eulogies to

Katharine Graham. For we recognize that they cannot help themselves-and alas,

this is only the East Coast manifestation of the long-established Hollywood

tradition of picking up the phone, calling everyone you know and sighing,

sadly, "What a pity. I just had lunch-talking about a deal-with Jack Lemmon …

River Phoenix … John Belushi … James Dean …."

Let us give thanks to Roger Ailes and Fox News' Paula Zahn,

whose use of psychics in their coverage of Chandra Levy's disappearance has

only served to make the late screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky seem even more

prescient. For it was a full 25 years ago that Chayefsky's

nightmarish screenplay for the film Network

predicted that soothsayers and psychics would eventually turn up on the nightly

news.

And yea, let us give thanks for new words and phrases that

have slipped into the American vernacular during the most recent summers past.

Let us revel in how easily they now roll off our tongues: Debris field. White Bronco. Low-speed chase. Cadaver-sniffing dogs. Clinton fatigue.

Accelerator/brake-pedal confusion.

Yes, let us take a moment and find the joy in these dog days

of summer.

Let us be thankful that no one we know has a desire to

appear on the reality-based television shows Fear Factor , Jackass or Survivor .

Let us exult in the new multi-thousand-dollar

stainless-steel Weber grills and Viking barbecues; for they restore our faith

that in America,

even the most primeval ritual-grilling meat-can be improved beyond all reason

and sanity.

And let us not look upon the endless Friday-night traffic

jam to the eastern end of Long Island as a burden, but rather as a piece of

audience-participation mixed-media installation art: the 50-mile brake light.

Yes, it is high summer in America.

Bill is in Harlem with a book deal, Hillary is in Washington, Madonna is starting to look like Bette Davis,

and Marlon Brando is on-screen, redux, in his last great role-before he pissed

his career away and became a boor. And somehow, somewhere in this great

metropolitan area, there are people who are willing to spend $2,500 to see

Michael Jackson in Madison Square Garden.

Let us avoid gloating upon the misfortunes of those who earn

their living balancing on the thin velvet rope of publicity.

For summer in America

is still about hope and innocence and possibility: first love, a first kiss, one perfect day at the beach.

Autumn is the far more appropriate season for Schadenfreude .

And fall, as we all know, is but a mere three weeks away.