The Press: Up from Fugger

Characteristically, the style is staccato, bone-bare, oracular and dull. The format is uninviting; usually four letterhead-size pages printed to look as if they had come fresh from a typewriter. The contents often suggest the confidential whisper of a race-track tout. The cost can be incredibly high: as much as $125 a year for some 3,000 words a week—an annual total well below the word count in one average issue of the New York Times (185,000). Yet so insatiable is the public appetite for inside dope that in the few decades since its birth, the...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!