Blogs have crashed the gates of the information keepers, effectively dismantling mainstream media’s monopoly on what is or isn’t news. It was only a matter of time before the so-called professional gossip columnist felt the sting.
I ran across this article in the New York Times (registration req.) about gossip columnist Liz Smith and other professional gossips complaining about the saturated and “ruthless” gossip market:
Gone too are the days when columnists had individual identities. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, who created their own celebrity brands with their trademark chapeaux, have been replaced by interchangeable mass market magazines and faceless blogs.But what sets Ms. Smith apart is that she doesn’t trash her subjects. This helps her maintain access, but it also means her column often lacks the prerequisite of the day: edge….
In today’s gossip world, being kind is hardly an option. “The Internet and blogs have returned gossip to its earliest human roots – the kind of gossip that the priests told you was a venal sin,” said Ms. Gerhart. “You can make it up. You can speculate wildly. You can accuse people of the most taboo practices, all in this sort of merry way.”
Yes, bloggers are implicated. I guess Smith and the other paid peddlers are discovering what journalists reluctantly found out some time ago about their profession: “Anybody can be a gossip.” There are blogs for just about everything else, so why not gossip? Some bloggers even get paid to spread gossip. Wonkette comes to mind, as well as other Nick Denton blogs like Gawker and Defamer. (Can’t be more explicit than that!)
“Gone are the days when a single powerful columnist could make or break a career,” writes Katharine Q. Seelye. Back in the day, professional gossips Hedda Hopper (pictured) and Walter Winchell had a lot of power, but what about today’s gossip writers? Some call Matt Drudge a gossip mongerer, and I think he has the power to make or break careers. Of course the Drudge-is-gossip meme was most often uttered by liberals during Bill Clinton’s impeachment scandal.
Wherever two or three are gathered, gossip will be in the midst of them. How many of you engage in gossip by listening to it, spreading it or both? I confess that on occasion I listen. I think it’s natural for us to want to hear dirt being dished out, especially about someone we don’t like. But we Christians know that gossip is a sin brought on by an idle tongue:
- Exodus 23:1 – Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.
- Proverbs 16:28 – A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends. And so on.
- Proverbs 25:18 – Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is the man who gives false testimony against his neighbor.
- II Thessalonians 3:11-12 – We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
- 1 Timothy 5:13 – Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.
Like anything else, blogs can be used for good, evil or everything in between.
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Interesting links: Kevin Drum on Washington Post reporters who monitor Wonkette all day: “Wonkette isn’t even a very good gossip writer, let alone someone worth monitoring continuously. Is that really the best the Post newsroom can do?”
