Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Celebrity gossip--I love it, but is it news?

Recently, it seems that celebrities are more famous for their personal lives than their movies or albums because of the celebrity blog phenomenom.

Blogs such as Perez Hilton (http://perezhilton.com/) and TMZ (http://www.tmz.com/) have changed popular culture in drastic ways, but are they really considered journalism?

These blogs have incriminating videos, photos and information that are making and breaking celebrities’ careers right now, but is it fair to give them the title of and “independent celebrity news site,” or “a tabloid journal”? The description that such sites as TMZ label themselves as.

I will not lie, I am a huge fan of the celebrity gossip sites, but I feel that it is much more a guilty pleasure than vital information that I need. I guess that there are many news outlets and many different news topics that I can’t discriminate, but I think that these sites may are being taken a little too seriously.

It is nice to read some news besides war and violence, but when I go to cnn.com I don’t want to read about Britney losing custody of her children. So, as much as I love these gossip sites, I like them as a separate indulgence, not a news source. I think that recently the line has been blurred on what is news, but what do you think?

1 comment:

Hazen said...

Yes the line has been blurred. While main stream media (MSM) chases celebrity fluff, the question is this:
What is it they're not covering, given that resources are always limited?
For example, while reams of copy were lavished on celebs in the late 1990s, Osama bin Laden was planning his Sept. 11 attacks.
Hardly any U.S. media covered the threat, or terrorism in general until after the World Trade Center was attacked.