“It had all the elements for the perfect tabloid gossip item–a clash between star financial journalists, big egos and a surprise ouster that had Wall Street buzzing,” opens Alex Williams’ article on “The Rising Stars of Gossip Blogs.”
To which we say: SRSLY? As we consider Page Six’s current top item (“Anna Paquin: I’m Bisexual”), this strikes us as a touch disingenuous.
As Choire Sicha wrote in an email he posted to his blog, “It’s the ‘gossip’ part that throws me off? What are we saying is ‘gossip’ now?”
Williams did not heed these wise words of caution! Instead, he uses the phrase “gossip blog” over and over, as if to hypnotize the reader into ignoring the fact that no meaningful distinction between “gossip” and “news” has been presented.
In the interest of clarifying matters, we undertook a comparison of the last couple days’ coverage by Foster Kamer, Page Six, and The Times‘ Richard Perez-Pena.
Characters and Institutions Covered: John Cook, Gawker, Yahoo News, The New York Times, Carlos Slim, Joe Pompeo, The New York Observer, John Carney, The Business Insider, Barack Obama, Matt Lauer, LL Cool J, and Sarah Palin.
Representative Headline: “Media Moves: Joe Pompeo Leaves the NY Observer for Business Insider”
Characters and Institutions Covered: Anna Paquin, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Kelly Cutrone, Kate White, Martha Stewart, Alexa Ray Joel, Robert Evans, and “the four stars of TLC’s Police Women of Maricopa County.”
Representative Headline: “Susan Sarandon’s Wild Ride”
Characters and Institutions: The New York Times, the Red Sox, Rupert Murdoch, the Times of London, the Wall Street Journal
Representative Headline: “Wall Street Journal‘s Local News Section for New York to Arrive on April 26″
Maybe The Times is already imagining a world of “gossip” Wall Street Journal-style? Because as much as we like Joe Pompeo, we must admit he is no Susan Sarandon.
