Tabloids were originally pint-sized newspapers specializing in the sensational. Once confined to so-called "scandal sheets," or magazine-style newspapers that many people saw only in grocery store checkout lines, during the last years of the twentieth century their subject matters of sex and scandal seeped into the mainstream press and virtually all other media, including magazines, radio, television, and the Internet. Nearly all of American journalism seemed affected by the spread of tabloid news, as coverage of the personal foibles and problems of celebrities and presidents became commonplace. The line between the splashy press and the serious journal became blurred.

Once a proprietary name for a pill or tablet, the word "tabloid" came to be almost exclusively associated with sensational journalism. Later, "tabloid" described a newspaper about half the size of most broadsheets. Tabloids popularized the news by featuring bold pictorial coverage of sex escapades, murder and gore, sports...