I know what your thinking. It’s disgusting, and its not really news. Well, its gossipy entertainment news. How much respect do I have for the genre? None really. How often do I read the stuff? Never. Alas, TMZ.com is an extremely popular blog site, so I feel compelled to address it here in my six site reviews of news blogs. I hate entertainment news.
TMZ deserves some credit for a few things however. They know who they, what their purpose is and who they’re serving. They are self aware at least. TMZ has become the primary source for celebrity gossip and rumor in American culture over the last few years. TMZ started on the net in 2005 as a joint creation of AOL and Warner Bros., and quickly exploded in popularity. By 2007, they began running that crappy companion TV show that can be seen in the nothing hours of the day on under-watched channels.
Because this is "newsworthy"
Like the Enquirer and the other rags that pollute checkout stands in seemingly every reach of Western culture, it’s been rumored that TMZ pays sources for information. This is a journalistic no-no. They’ve denied it flatly in the past, but the consensus in the industry is to take that response with a grain of salt.
For all the shit they create and abuse they take, the cover entertainment news pretty well. They’ve broken major stories in the past, and are seeming to do so with more regularity as time passes. I know for a fact that they were the first media outlet to break the news of the deaths of Brittany Murphy (Clueless fame for me) and Michael Jackson, the most visible human being ever.
If you were the first to break the news of Michael Jackson’s death, then your doing something right, regardless of how greasy you had to be to get the scoop.
The site is well designed, I must say. Entertainment news is driven by images, and scrolling through the site, the images posted claim much more space than the articles themselves. The search bar is right there for you to use, all the RSS feeds and chiclets you could want to relay the stuff to your friends are there under each post. All this is expected from a site that is run and managed by a media powerhouse.
A bank of developing stories is present, which is great and will keep people coming back multiple times a day. There’s interactive polling and discussion as well, which allows for the reader input; the magic that makes blogs what they are.
Technorati, the renowned blog-monitoring and ranking site has TMZ.com listed as the 10th most visited blog on the nets, and the #1 entertainment news destination out there. As much as I hate to say it, the site is a powerhouse and it doesn’t appear that it will be losing any clout anytime soon. Well, barring a huge lawsuit of course.
Now, enjoy the crappy TV show.
