Writer knows true story behind tabloid headlines

PORTLAND, Ore.

You plop your can of pork and beans on the supermarket’s checkout belt and move past the tabloids bleating lurid details of the escapades of this or that starlet.

Then, in the world’s blackest ink, you see:

“Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent”

or “Bag Lady’s B.O. Kills Five People on Bus”

or “Grandma Turns Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket”

Who, you may ask, writes this bilge?

For a while it was Tom D’Antoni, a freelance writer and producer of television documentaries.

Mr. D’Antoni says the work wasn’t easy and it left a dark mark on him. He also wrote the stories, and, yes, he says, he made up everything. That didn’t bother the Florida-based tabloid the Sun, which bought his work in the mid-1980s.

Some of his best (and, he notes, his worst) are detailed in his book “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent,” published by Villard Books.

Mr. D’Antoni was doing pre-game broadcasts for the Baltimore Orioles in the mid-1980s and not making much money. For a time, he was publisher of Harry, Baltimore’s underground newspaper.

“I worked for most of the TV stations in Baltimore. I was the jazz and pop-music critic for Maryland Public Broadcasting,” he says. He worked as a radio talk-show host and, for a few months, “I was the worst television news producer of all time. I hated it.”

He saw the tabloids and figured he could do at least that well.

“One of my ex-wives got a job on the Sun,” he recalls in an interview. “I wrote her and asked her if she would show some of my work” to the publisher. Payment ranged from $25 to $50 or so for a headline and story, sometimes more, depending on how prominently it was used.

Some would be on the lighter side — such as “Woman Goes on High-Fiber Diet, Eats Her Clothes” or “New Genetic Discovery Can Make Your Dog Smell Like Pizza.” Some others he wishes he hadn’t written: “Mother Bites Off Own Tongue to Feed Starving Child in Ethiopian Camp.”

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