Yesterday we featured a low budget tabloid. Today we’re going to the upper end of the scale. Exposing America’s Sin Cities appeared in 1956 and had all the hallmarks of big publisher money: good paper and printing, competent photography, and credits to real journalists. It was put out one time only by Greenwich, Connecticut based Whitestone Publications, which produced magazines such as True Police Cases and Startling Detective.
For that and other reasons, some might consider Exposing America’s Sin Cities a true crime magazine, but we feel that its minimal specifics about individual cases, focus on sexual titillation, and photo-heavy content make it a tabloid. Plus its cover is pure tabloid, meant to echo successful publications like Confidential and Whisper. But why choose one or the other? Let’s call this a hybrid magazine.
The cities laid bare by journos Earl J. Abbott, James Kerr, and Ed Barcelo include Galveston, Phenix City, Chicago, New Orleans, and—of course—Washington, D.C., where corruption is an industry and they call bribery “lobbying.” This magazine is a valuable find, sometimes offered by sellers at $100, so we decided not to rip it apart to scan the hard-to-reach middle pages. That leaves you with fewer pages than we’d have preferred to upload, but the ones we did are very interesting. See below.
