HOW EMPTY GOSSIP IS KILLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP CULTURE

By late December, even celeb site Jossip raised the white flag in a post called, "Gossip's Dead and It's Everyone's Fault." The item offered a brief summation of the fallen soldiers on the field: "Ben Widdicombe was the first to go, ankling his post as the New York Daily News' most respected gossip columnist. Next were Rush & Molloy, the married gossips who since 1995 had also penned a column for the Daily News -- they wanted to focus on other stories for the paper. Then Jo Piazza, whose scuttlebutt replaced Widdicombe's, quit, too. Jossip's gossip-oriented sister site Mollygood shut down, much like the short-lived PageSix.com before it. Also, tabloid sales continued to shrink." Layoffs hit Gawker and its sister site Jezebel. TMZ, which had so zealously launched its own TV show in 2007, ended the year with a decrease in readership -- a rare occurrence online, where new users appear by the minute. It seemed deeply symbolic when Mr. Blackwell -- the bitchy tabloid queen responsible for "The Worst Dressed List," a Schadenfreude tradition that gave birth to a gazillion "fashion police" -- passed away in October. It was fitting, almost. The end of an era. Or, depending on your perspective -- an error.

Salon
Dec 26 2008