Variety: Blogs have given a megaphone to assistants to stars and execs, personal trainers, script readers and others who before were only anonymous sources in Page Six.
More from the Variety article:
“Unlike showbiz Web sites operated by journos of varying repute, blogs tend to be written in the first person and typically link to other sites on the Web.
Bloggers may not have a lot of power, but they do have access, and that’s catnip to their relatively small, but devoted, cadre of readers.
“What’s interesting about the Hollywood blogs is that their big impact may not be the way they impact ‘Entertainment Tonight’ or ‘E! True Hollywood Story’ covering something but they’re carving out a new piece of real estate,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
Everyone and everything in Hollywood is fair game for Defamer, a popular blog run by former TV assistant Mark Lisanti, who doesn’t even pretend to verify the dish he gets, mostly from assistants, but occasionally from publicists.
“We do rumor as much as we do things that are verifiably true,” says Lisanti. The aspiring screenwriter claims that disseminating insider gossip “is part of what’s useful about the site.””
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
