Bravo Dishes The Dirt on The Daily News

"I never got used to it," Joanna Molloy says of the camera that followed her for "Tabloid Wars." (By Steve Freeman -- Bravo)

George Rush, a New York Daily News gossip columnist, describes one of the benefits of his job:

"Occasionally you can squeeze the genitalia of powerful people and make them yell or threaten to sue you, and that's kind of a kick."

Kerry Burke, a News reporter, spills the secret of how he gets people to talk: "There are times I've gone to doors and started kicking them, and either that door is gonna give or the person on the other side is gonna answer, because I need that quote."

Tabloid journalism is an art unto itself, a rock-'em, sock-'em, go-for-the-jugular enterprise that conjures up the get-me-rewrite days of newspapering. And these comments in "Tabloid Wars," a six-part Bravo series on the Daily News that debuts next Monday, capture much of the flavor.

With the media's reputation at record lows, reporters are unlikely protagonists these days. They are more often in the spotlight for fabrication or plagiarism, for protecting unnamed sources in tangled scandals, or for publishing classified information that the administration says undermines the war on terror. But the bulk of reporting in this country is local reporting on matters closest to people's lives -- violent crime is a staple, especially in New York -- and that is Bravo's focus.

The reality series, taped last summer, manages to convey a gritty street feel, though the tight-shot emphasis on crime and celebrities misses much of what a newspaper does, such as reporting on schools, subway problems and City Council meetings.

"It's a 'Law and Order'-type show," says Frances Berwick, Bravo's executive vice president. "You're totally into the characters who are doing their job." The network greenlighted the series after looking at an initial tape of interviews with News staffers, Berwick says. "We felt like we were looking into something cloaked in secrecy and a bit of glamour."

The biggest surprise, says Ted Skillman, an executive producer, was the passion of reporters whom he expected to be cynical: "You see Kerry Burke, who'll go all night long until he drops because he wants to get the story, whether it's celebrity fluff or a triple homicide."

While the series makes much of the News's rivalry with the New York Post, it doesn't deal with the business aspects, such as the evaporation of the 229,000-circulation lead that Mort Zuckerman's News had over Rupert Murdoch's Post five years ago. The News now sells 708,000 copies a day compared with 673,000 for the Post.

Newspapers have a checkered history in film and television portrayals. From the poker-playing Chicago characters of "The Front Page" to the gruff city editor of "Lou Grant" and the hero-detectives of "All the President's Men," journalists have often been cast as lovable rogues or dogged crusaders. But "Absence of Malice," the 1981 film in which Sally Field's character sleeps with sources and concocts a bogus story with prosecutors, ushered in an era in which newspaper types were depicted as unethical sensation-seekers. The Bravo series is more in the mold of Ron Howard's film "The Paper," which was filled with swaggering cop reporters and foulmouthed broads -- but it has the additional virtue of being true.

The first episode of "Tabloid Wars" features Burke knocking on doors after an attack in Howard Beach, Queens, that may have been racially motivated, and later chasing a tip that Robert De Niro's nanny stole from him. Rush is seen cozying up to Victoria Gotti at a party.

Taut editing makes it appear that the reporters are always on the go, always up against nerve-racking deadlines. And the News staffers are hammy enough to strike the proper tough-guy pose as cameras trail them around the city.