BSG is magazine industry shorthand for the niche comprising People, Us, In Style, In Touch, Style, and Entertainment Weekly. (For demographic reasons, Teen People is not usually included among the BSGs.) The abbreviation stands for big soft glossy, with soft in turn meaning the very most demotic kind of human interest.
As of July 2001, three of the six major BSGs are owned by Eckleschafft-Böd Medien A.G., a German conglomerate that controls nearly 40 percent of all US trade publishing.
Like the rest of the mainstream magazine industry, each of the BSG weeklies subscribes to an online service that compiles and organizes all contracted stringers’ submissions to both national wires and Gannett, of which submissions roughly 8 percent ever actually run in the major news dailies. A select company of editorial interns, known sometimes as shades because of the special anodized goggles required by OSHA for intensive screen time, is tasked to peruse this service.
Skip Atwater, who was one of the rare and old school BSG journalists who actually pitched pieces as well as receiving assignments, was also one of the few paid staffers at Style who bothered to review the online service for himself. As a practical matter, he did so only when he was not in the field, and then usually at night, after his dogs had again gone to sleep, sitting up in his Ball State Cardinals cap with a glass of ale and operating his home desktop according to instructions which Laurel Manderley’s predecessor had configured as a special template that fit along the top of the unit’s keyboard. An AP stringer out of Indianapolis, filing from the Franklin County Fair on what was alleged to be the second largest Monte Cristo sandwich ever assembled, had included a curio about displays of extremely intricate and high class figurines made out of what the stringer had spelled fasces. The objets d’art themselves were not described — they had been arrayed in glass cases that were difficult to get near because of the crowds around them, and people’s hands and exhalations had apparently smeared the glass so badly that even when you did finally shoulder your way up close the interiors were half obscured. Later, Skip Atwater would learn that these slanted glass cabinets were acquired from the tax sale of a failed delicatessen in Greensburg IN, which for decades had had a small and anomalous Hasidic community.
It was a word padding aside in a throwaway item unflagged by any of Style’s shades, and from his own native experience Atwater was disposed to assume that the things were probably crude little Elvises or Earnhardts made of livestock waste. . except the display banner’s allegedly quoted Hands Free Art Crafts caught his eye. The phrase appeared to make no sense unless automation were involved, which, as applied to livestock waste, would be curious indeed. Curiosity, of course, being more or less Skip Atwater’s oeuvre with regard to WHAT IN THE WORLD. Not curiosity as in tabloid or freakshow, or rather all right sometimes borderline freakshow but with an upbeat thrust. The content and tone of all BSGs were dictated by market research and codified down to the smallest detaiclass="underline" celebrity profiles, entertainment news, hot trends, and human interest, with human interest representing a gamut in which the occasional freakshow item had a niche — but the rhetoric was tricky. BSGs were at pains to distinguish themselves from the tabloids, whose target market was wholly different. Style’s WITW items were people centered and always had to be both credible and uplifting, or latterly there at least had to be ancillary elements that were uplifting and got thumped hard.
Atwater could thump with the best. And he was old school and energetic: he ran down two or three possible WITW stories for every one that got written, and pitched things, and could rewrite other men’s copy if asked to. The politics of rewrites could get sticky, and interns often had to mediate between the salarymen involved, but Atwater was known around Style’s editorial offices as someone who could both rewrite and get rewritten without being an asshole about it. At root, his reputation with staffers and interns alike was based in this: his consistent failure to be an asshole. Which could, of course, be a double edged sword. He was seen as having roughly the self esteem of a prawn. Some at Style found him fussy or pretentious. Others questioned his spontaneity. Sometimes the phrase queer duck was used. There was the whole awkward issue of his monotone wardrobe. The fact that he actually carried pictures of his dogs in his wallet was either endearing or creepy, depending whom you asked. A few of the sharper interns intuited that he’d had to overcome a great deal in himself in order to get this far.
He knew just what he was: a professional soft news journalist. We all make our adjustments, hence the term well adjusted. A babyfaced bantam with ears about which he’d been savagely teased as a boy — Jughead, Spock, Little Pitcher. A polished, shallow, earnest, productive, consummate corporate pro. Over the past three years, Skip Atwater had turned in some 70 separate pieces to Style, of which almost 50 saw print and a handful of others ran under rewriters’ names. A volunteer fire company in suburban Tulsa where you had to be a grandmother to join. When Baby Won’t Wait — Moms who never made it to the hospital tell their amazing stories. Drinking and boating: The other DUI. Just who really was Slim Whitman. This Grass Ain’t Blue — Kentucky’s other cash crop. He Delivers—81 year old obstetrician welcomes the grandchild of his own first patient. Former Condit intern speaks out. Today’s forest ranger: He doesn’t just sit in a tower. Holy Rollers — Inline skateathon saves church from default. Eczema: The silent epidemic. Rock ’n’ Roll High School — Which future pop stars made the grade? Nevada bikers rev up the fight against myasthenia gravis. Head of the Parade — From Macy’s to the Tournament of Roses, this float designer has done them all. The All Ads All The Time cable channel. Rock of Ages — These geologists celebrate the millennium in a whole new way. Sometimes he felt that if not for his schipperkes’ love he would simply blow away and dissipate like milkweed. The women who didn’t get picked for Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire: Where did they come from, to what do they return. Leapin’ Lizards — The Gulf Coast’s new alligator plague. One Lucky Bunch of Cats — A terminally ill Lotto winner’s astounding bequest. Those new home cottage cheese makers: Marvel or ripoff? Be(-Happy-)Atitudes — This Orange County pastor claims Christ was no sourpuss. Dramamine and NASA: The untold story. Secret documents reveal Wallis Simpson cheated on Edward VIII. A Whole Lotta Dough — Delaware teen sells $40,000 worth of Girl Scout cookies. . and isn’t finished yet! For these former agoraphobics, home is not where the heart is. Contra: The thinking person’s square dance.
At the same time, it was acknowledged that Atwater’s best had sometimes been those pieces he ran down himself and pitched, items that often pushed the BSG envelope. For 7 March ’99, Atwater had submitted the longest WITW piece ever done for Style, on the case of a U. Maryland professor murdered in his apartment where the only witness was the man’s African gray parrot, and all the parrot would repeat was ‘Oh God, no, please no’ and then gruesome noises, and on the veterinary hypnotist that the authorities had had working with the parrot to see what more they could get out of it. The UBA here had been the hypnotist and her bio and beliefs about animal consciousness, the central tensions being was she just a New Age loon along the lines of Beverly Hills pet therapists or was there really something to it, and if the parrot was hypnotizable as advertised and sang then what would be its evidentiary status in court.