In Florida: The Rogues of Tabloid Valley

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Unlike its ritzy neighbors, Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Lantana is a sleepy, unassuming little town on Florida's east coast. On closer inspection, however, the place has subtle marks of distinction. Like Dawn's News & Smoke Shop, where the daily selection of newspapers from around the world rivals that of any five-star hotel in London, New York City or Tokyo. The papers are bought and avidly read by a rambunctious colony of 200-plus British and Commonwealth expatriates who make their homes in Lantana and the surrounding area.

These are no ordinary immigrants to sunbaked Florida. They are top tabloid journalists from Fleet Street -- most of them Englishmen, Scots, Australians and Canadians -- lured to the U.S. by the inflated salaries at the Lantana- . based National Enquirer. (Starting pay for a reporter: $50,000 a year, with no experience required, except an apparent aptitude for spying on the celebrity species.) The Fleet Streeters began arriving in droves during the 1970s, enough of them to field cricket games, fill dart rooms and prompt some local eateries to include bangers and mash on their menus. Their presence in turn encouraged other tabloids to set up shop nearby -- the Globe, the National Examiner, the Sun and the Weekly World News (son of Enquirer, to the irreverent) -- transforming Lantana and its environs into the tabloid capital of America.

"The Brits were kids in a candy store," says Malcolm Balfour, a South African by birth and former Enquirer editor who now works out of Lantana for the New York Post and Bild Zeitung, a West German daily. "The Enquirer meant plastic cards that would take you to the best hotels in the world." Enquirer Owner Generoso Pope Jr. was never satisfied with his staff and fired reporters often. Nonetheless, seduced by the sunshine, many of the dismissed staffers stayed on in the Lantana area, working as free-lancers for other tabloids or mass-circulation dailies abroad. Some found lucrative opportunities outside the tabs. Mike Irish launched a real estate company; Len Stone founded Mr. L's Men's Boutique, a clothing store.

Come Friday nights, the boisterous gang congregates at the neighboring bars, the Hawaiian, the Whistle Stop or the Red Lion (a pseudo pub), to swap leg- pulling tales and practice one-upmanship by inventing sidesplitter headlines. Billy Burt, editor of the Examiner, proffers the classic example of HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR as the quintessence of a tabloid art form. Balfour opts for convolution: THE TOASTER POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL or, better, THE DOG THAT SHOT ITS OWNER. All voice serious concern that unimaginative headlines -- GIRL, 11, BECOMES GRANDMOTHER -- are replacing zany eye-catchers -- CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS USED MAP PREPARED BY SPACE ALIENS -- that reflect the best work of twisted minds. Ex-Fleet Streeter Sheila O'Donovan, known to Examiner readers as Lovelorn Columnist Sheela Wood, praises what she considers America's restrained tabloid sensibility. She quit a Hong Kong tabloid in protest after the editors put a large blob on the front page with the headline 20 CARS CRUSH CRAWLING CRIPPLE.