Having long kept up with celebrity news as a guilty pleasure (I recommend thesuperficial.com and wwtdd.com), I’m mystified as to where these stories come from. There always seems to be a “close friend” or “source” who gives an account of what’s going on in Paris Hilton’s private life, though usually the quote is laughably exaggerated and sensational.
Questioon is, who are these “sources”? Are they actual people? Actual friends? Are the stories 100% fabricated, and Britney and Kevin living a happy non-redneck life at this very moment?
Secondary question: assuming they’re NOT 100% fabricated, what’s the vetting process like for stories at soulless rags like Star and Enquirer? I would doubt they bother double-checking their sources…
The rags have hundreds of people in the community that they go to on a regular basis. They may include those close to a particular star - bodyguards, servants, friends, relatives, hangers-on, entourage - or people who work in businesses that the celebrities frequent - caterers, waiters, hair stylists, spa attendants, etc. etc. - or people in the industry - publicists, mailroom kids, crew, anyone who might want to tell a story.
These people overhear lots of conversations and know they can pick up a quick $50 or $100 for passing the info along.
Any real scoops almost certainly have to have more than one overheard source, but there is a real spectrum of celebrity magazines and tabloids and some really don’t care about accuracy and some are very careful not to upset their relations with the stars.
Dish : how gossip became the news and the news became just another show, by Jeannette Walls is a good overall review of the history of gossip. The untold story : my 20 years running the National Enquirer, by Iain Calder says a lot about how that tabloid functioned.
How often is the “unnamed source” the celeb’s own professional publicist? After all, you know what they say about there being no such thing as bad publicity, and deliberately “leaking” stories to the tabloids has to be about the cheapest and easiest publicity around.
I thought that some sort of recent gossip column imbroglio brought out one rumor vector. Publicists will share gossip about celebrities that they don’t work for in return for the gossip columnists not writing bad things about the respective publicist’s own clients.