Mr. Levin could relate. Bestowing infamy on those who hadn’t really earned their fame in the first place was no picnic either. These days in Hollywood, nobodies were on the rise. In sports, meanwhile, guys earned their stardom. There was no faking it. And when they faltered, well, the drama was that much richer for having come after so much hard work.

Take Ben Roethlisberger, for instance. Before TMZ broke the news on Friday, March 5, that the Steelers quarterback had been accused of sexually assaulting a young woman in a nightclub bathroom in Georgia—and before news of the allegations ricocheted through every corner of the sports media—the 28-year-old kid had hustled his way out of Lima, Ohio, played himself into the first round of the NFL draft, fought for Rookie of the Year honors and battled for a Super Bowl ring. Can you imagine jeopardizing all that for one night of club-hopping in some beer-funnel town?

By Monday evening, TMZ Sports had published 16 Roethlisberger items. “You can’t become famous in the world of sports the way you can in the world of celebrity by just hanging out in a club or dabbling in a reality show,” Mr. Levin told The Observer. “You have to achieve something. You have to be really good. That makes them more interesting to me.”

Mr. Levin announced recently that TMZ Sports would be expanding its coverage. He’s in good company. These days, while traditional coverage of various aspects of American life continues to shrink, there’s no shortage of new-media outlets scrambling to grab a piece of the fallen American athlete. Arianna Huffington now has a sports vertical alongside those for politics and media. On Tuesday afternoon, the top three headlines read “Tiger Woods Spotted Kissing Wife”; “Georgia QB Arrested at Bar”; and “Tiger Mistress Beauty Pageant: See Who’s Favored to Win.”

Deadspin, one of the original no-access, no-bias sports blogs, is now so well established it provides a recurring news segment for MSNBC. In the coming weeks, NBC legal analyst Dan Abrams will launch his contribution to the field, a site called SportsGrid.

Mr. Levin thinks that the increased competition will be good for everyone. “I don’t think it’s an issue of people having to choose us over whoever,” said Mr. Levin. “People who are into sports will go to 10 sites. It’s not a zero-sum game.”

Recently, Dan Le Batard, a regular ESPN contributor, wrote a column for The Miami Herald on the growing generation gap between old and new sports media. “Sports journalism is being forced to evolve into selling its principles and fairness (its soul, in other words) in exchange for clicks and cash,” he wrote.

Mr. Levin brushed aside the criticism. “The last thing I want to do is make this contentious and us against them,” he said. “Now if a Ben Roethlisberger case comes around, we’re a news operation, we’re going to cover it. But that doesn’t mean that we’re one-dimensional and that’s the only thing we’re looking for. It isn’t. TMZ Sports is not going to be all about Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger.”

fgillette@observer.com

Dominick's Diary is a site devoted to sending good wishes to Vanity Fair's special correspondent Dominick Dunne. The site, which Ms. Smith says was co-created by TMZ's Harvey Levin (who should really get someone to fix its header tag), consists of some intro copy that reads:

What follows is a series of fond words from friends and fans, including someone claiming to be Ms. Smith who says, "Dominick, I love and admire you so get well quick. Howdy Doody and I send our best."

In the midst of his rant, he accuses TMZ.com managing editor Harvey Levin of abusing the freedom of information act by subpeoning Mr. Mayer's thoughts—specifically the ones he had on September 14, 2007.

“The reason I’m so worried about this night is that I had a little bit too much to drink that night and I fell asleep with the gay network Logo on,” he told them with a straight face, pausing to look at the ground for a few moments. “A lot of dreams were had that night and if they ever get out, they represent a very small fraction of my day.”

Yesterday’s news that Us Weekly blogger Noelle Hancock (a former Observer staffer) is jumping ship to the soon-to-relaunch PageSix.com got us thinking about what the Post’s plans are for the new Web site. (We understand that the Post—through photo editor Dave Boyle; not Page Six editor Richard Johnson—has made offers to at least five Us staffers, though Ms. Hancock is the only one to jump ship thus far.) Gawker reported that the site is trying to staff up, especially on the West Coast, where TMZ currently has a stranglehold on the minutiae of what goes down every night at Les Deux.

However! A quick glance at the Nielsen/NetRatings stats for the past three months shows that the only site that’s shown growth is People.com, which had 6.5 million unique U.S. visitors in September, up by more than 1.5 million since July. TMZ’s growth appears to have stagnated in the same time period, though that site’s traffic still dwarves People’s: In July, TMZ recorded nearly 10.3 million visitors, which dipped to 9.4 million in August and jumped back up to July levels in September. By contrast, UsMagazine.com’s traffic has stagnated at around the 1 million mark since July, and Perez Hilton’s uniques have gone from 2.4 million in July to 2.2 million in September.

Taken together, the numbers point to what can only be a worrying trend for celebrity news and gossip sites: there is, perhaps, some audience fatigue. TMZ recently laid off one of its New York-based staffers, who was writing for the Web site; this staffer was told that the site was restructuring. Of course, TMZ also has its own successful venture in TMZ TV, for which Web site managing editor Harvey Levin serves as executive producer. Mr. Levin created the tabloid TV show Celebrity Justice in 2002, and some have speculated that since the show was canceled in 2005, Mr. Levin has been plotting his triumphant return to tabloid TV—an outlet that is ultimately much more lucrative than a Web site. Still, a TMZ spokeswoman told us that both the TV show and the website will continue moving “full steam ahead” for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Levin told Media Mob, “Page Six is a force in this genre. There’s plenty of interest in the material and room for more successful ventures.” Sure there is!

A Post spokesman said he would have no comment about the paper’s plans for the Web site.

The relaunch of PageSix.com is just the latest brand extension of the Post’s namesake gossip column—Page Six Magazine launched in September—and others in the industry are wondering whether the paper is spreading itself too thin.

“I think you take one look at [Page Six Magazine] and you realize their ability to expand beyond the column is probably not as much of an imminent threat as one might think,” said an editor at a competitor. Page Six head Johnson does not oversee the magazine and, sources say, will also not be in charge of the website. After last week—when Johnson threatened New York magazine writer Vanessa Grigoriadis with rape for daring to write that his column had been “emasculated”—that might not be such a bad thing. After all, this brand extension could be the Post’s way of insuring that Page Six will go on, even if the currently embattled Mr. Johnson leaves the paper.

Whether the site will actually make an impact in the gossip landscape, however, is still an open question. For a site that’s long relied on a network of tipsters and cozy relationships with P.R. executives eager to get their clients’ names in the column, the new, cutthroat brand of celebrity gossip must have come as a bit of a shock to the system—and it’s clear that the paper is still figuring out how to deal with it.