Famous tabloid publisher Dylan Howard leaves American Media Inc.

COMPANY

7.45pm PDT 04/04/2020

by

Gary Baum

He had spent the past year producing documents and podcasts for the company after his high profile involvement in the stories of Trump, Weinstein and Bezos.

Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer The editor who was elevated to the position of content director at American Media Inc. following an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the company as part of the same secret payments system that brought l Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen left behind bars, left the company on March 31. The Hollywood Reporter learned that his contract was not renewed.

Neither Howard nor AMI immediately responded to a request for comment. Variety first reported his departure.

Howard’s tenure at the top of the AMI tabloid empire (which included RadarOnline and Star) brought him to the white-hot center not only of Trump’s story, but also of Harvey Weinstein and Jeff Bezos. His tactics have won title-generating scoops while earning him a singularly notorious reputation in the media as a thug for the powerful. Ronan Farrow accused him of digging up dirt on Weinstein’s accusers and shredding documents incriminating Trump as the Inquire had collected but never printed. Bezos later released Howard’s emails threatening to post compromising photos of Amazon founder and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez – unless Bezos Washington Post objected to what he called critical cover of the newspaper of Saudi Arabia’s trade relations with AMI.

After AMI entered into a plea agreement with the Department of Justice, Howard moved to his position as CCO under the leadership of David Pecker. In this new role, he oversaw the start-up subsidiary Broad + Water Studios, which produced documentaries priced according to the company’s tabloid instincts. In November 2019, The daily beast reported that he had offered to secretly pay $ 1 million to R. Kelly to participate in a television series he hoped to develop on the rape allegations by singer R&B. The proposed arrangement would have involved the formation of a front company to hide the payment of AMI from Kelly. Howard recognized the openness to The daily beast but noted that he “went no further than general exploratory discussions between [Kelly’s camp] and myself and I have never progressed internally at American Media. “

Howard has also worked on several podcast series and co-authored books on the real Quickie crime (some based on each other) on favorite tabloid subjects, ranging from the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein to the death of Natalie Wood. Even after the agreement with the Department of Justice, he was able to find new AMI partners for his projects in the emerging audio division of Endeavor and continue to maintain existing relationships with entities such as The Reelz Channel and Discovery Communications. He also managed to convince a series of prominent figures, from Megyn Kelly and Phil McGraw to Martin Sheen, to promote his work – even shortly before he submitted them to his contradictory reports.

In 2017, Howard was accused by the Associated Press of sexually harassing employees of AMI’s Los Angeles offices early in the decade. The company said it had carried out an internal review at the time and found no serious misconduct. He then left AMI for 15 months to head Celebuzz, where he faced similar allegations. Howard then returned to AMI, promoted to supervise the Inquire and all of AMI’s newsrooms from its New York office. Pecker had previously refused to respond to The Hollywood ReporterQuestions about the various allegations of harassment.