We’ve shown you a lot of early- and mid-1960s examples of the American tabloid National Star Chronicle, but for a change we have late stage Chronicle, published today in 1973. A decade on we see no substantial differences except that the layout is cluttered and hard on the eyes. Compared to other tabs of the time Chronicle is incredibly tame—there’s only a smidge of nudity, very little mayhem, and not even one story about monkeys performing oral sex on strippers. It almost feels like Chronicle is on life support, like all the trusted scribes and typesetters were let go in favor of cheapie replacements—and indeed we strongly suspect 1973 was the paper’s last year.
Chronicle’s death was probably a good thing, not just because of all the sloppy margins and crooked insets they began passing off as actual graphic design, but because when Sally Struthers and Alice Cooper are your frontline celebs there’s little doubt your peak journalistic years have passed. But even if there’s a serious dearth of good tabloid fodder in this issue, we did note the article that touted tax reform by citing instances of 24,000 wealthy Americans paying only 4.13% and 276 paying 0%, thanks to assorted loopholes for the rich. Back then such cases were outliers, whereas today, alas not so much. But fret not. There will always be bread and circuses for all us overtaxed middle masses—and we’ll do our part here on Pulp Intl. by continuing to share plenty of distracting tabloids.
