Reflecting payments of forty or fifty dollars to various sources: to the counter girl at a Beverly Hills salon, for information on Goldie Hawn; to a valet, for Pete Sampras; to a shopkeeper, for Dwight Howard; and to a waiter, for Hayden Christensen
Speaking of Kardashians
Someone doesnât seem to like it when the tables are turnedâŚ
âAnother woman asked Levin what he thought went into making a successful journalist. âGood stories donât come easy,â Levin said. âYou get shut down all the time, and if somebody shuts the door youâve got to find the way around the door.â He said that he told his staff, âFind twelve ways around the word âno.â â After Levin finished, students crowded around him, asking for autographs and selfies. As they dispersed, I stepped forward to introduce myself. Arms crossed, he expressed displeasure over the fact that I had contacted current and former TMZ employees, and referred me to his publicist.â
It always weirded me out that people care so much about the private lives of strangers that celebrity gossip is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Is it just so people can get the thrill of being a stalker without having to put in the effort? Just get off your lazy ass and buy those night-vision binoculars already, weirdo!
I hear Brad Pitt feels the same way.
[quote=âburpchick, post:3, topic:73776â]
Arms crossed, he expressed displeasure over the fact that I had contacted current and former TMZ employees, and referred me to his publicist
[/quote]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8oPjPU5x8
I saw The New Yorker guy being interviewed this morning. Charlie Rose asked him about paying money for info, and also asked him to speculate about whether the famous can pay TMZ to withhold stories from the public. The author did mention something about a potential Justin Bieber story that got quashed because whatever it was that Bieber did, Harvey Levin felt it would harm Bieber too much at such an young age. I canât even imagine.
Honestly, Iâm with @BrainsporeâI couldnât care about Bieber and the rest. However, no respectable media operation should pay sources for info. Itâs too icky.
Edit for quashed, not squashed. Damn autocorrect!
Does TMZ even pretend to be a ârespectable media operation?â
Yeah, you got me there.
Okay, I donât have to imagine. Just began reading the story and Bieber used the n-word.
I get it if the celebrity is doing something notable or prurient â drunken antics, violent crimes, sex stuff â but âMalcolm Jamal-Warner arrives at LAX and buys a bottle of Evian!â I donât understand the newsworthiness of.
The Bieber+TMZ thing was a vid of him gleefully telling a racist joke at the age of 15.
But TMZ didnât exactly quash it, TMZ held it and used their possession of it to blackmail Bieber and his team into cooperating with TMZ stories and make scheduled appearances on the shows over about a 4 year period.
A British tabloid finally got a hold of some version of the vid and released it - freeing Bieber from TMZâs grasp while proving the vid merely a short-term embarrassing non-story anyway - and now TMZ admits they had it all along but totally whitewashed why they didnât release it.
How can there possibly be so much money in pictures of celebrities in airports?!?
âScumbagâ is the oldest profession on Earth.
Erma Bombeck would say third oldest.
I agree, but it must be because the celebrities look like normal people and give people the impression that you could see them yourself omg!
âHeâs just like us!â
I like how much criticism of tmz comes from gawker⌠Pot calling the kettle black much?
TMZ didnât inflict kinja on the unsuspecting public, so theyâve got that going for them at least.
I used to read Gawker (4+ years ago), but only for the comments. I felt like the posters were frustrated screen play writers.
