This is a sad way to start the day. TMZ has reported (CBS followed up) that Eighties teen star Corey Haim was found dead in his home this morning from an apparent drug overdose. From TMZ: (more...)

A few hours after it was announced Tiger Woods would make his first public statement Friday at 11amET since his Thanksgiving night...incident, he was spotted jogging in a widely circulated Getty Images picture. But on closer inspection, the image, and the public statement, is vintage Tiger - and that's not a good thing. (more...)

In the mid-1950s Confidential was ruining the marriage of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball -- at least in the eyes of the American people. "'I knew Desi was inviting me for more than a drink,’ said the babe," according to the damning story. Thing is, the "babe" was a prostitute, paid by Confidential, one of the nation's first gossip magazines and the subject of the new book Shocking True Story, reviewed today in the New York Times. (more...)

What a difference six months make! The power of TMZ is such these days that a mere tweet can set even those most established media organizations afire with nary a question mark in sight. A short time ago TMZ reported and Twittered out that Jay Leno "Jay Leno has made a new deal with NBC, which gives him "The Tonight Show" from 11:35 - 12:35." Shortly thereafter Twitter was ablaze with the @TMZ news....including @BreakingNews the Twitter feed, which is owned by NBC. (more...)

Conflicting reports surround the apparent death of Casey Johnson, girlfriend to Tila Tequila and daughter of Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets. TMZ initially reported her death, but Ms. Tequila recently tweeted that she learned that Johnson was "not dead but currently in a coma!!!" Alas, a spokesmen for the Jets issued the following statement: "The Johnson family is mourning its tragic loss, and asks for privacy during this very difficult time." (via NY Daily News.) (more...)

and the winner is Newspapers are dying, magazines are dying: this is the story of 2009 where the media is concerned. However, the future of media, such as it is, does not look quite so dim. Or dim at all, really. Obviously, the brave new media world that we are slowly moving into (some at a quicker pace than others!) will look entirely different in twelve months' time; something that will likely be in large part due to the efforts of the folks we listed on our online editors of the year poll. So who gets the final nod as our online editor of the year? Our picks below: feel free to add yours in the comments section. (more...)

Today is apparently media hoax day. Earlier today TMZ.com, they of the enormous scoops, looks to have gotten punk'd when they published an old photo of what appeared to be then-senator John F. Kennedy sunbathing on a ship filled with naked women. Alas (or not depending how rosy your view of Camelot is) the picture appears to be a fake. Well hold on to your hats folks, this isn't the only fake picture making its way around the media world. (more...)

What would have happened if TMZ was around during the Kennedy Administration? They very likely could have changed history. Today they published an image from the 1950s of then-Senator John F. Kennedy on a boat with naked women. And watch out sports stars, this could be your future. Update: The pic could be fake. (more...)

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies.  The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. (more...)

VOTE! If 2009 was a tough year for magazines and newspapers -- and boy, was it ever -- it was a bang-up year for the editors of the blogs listed below. Somewhere between these varied and influential websites lies the future of journalism and media. Whether that scares you or excites you probably depends on whether you still get your news in print or are accustomed to starting your day via the Twitter app on your iPhone or Blackberry. Below is a list of online editors who have manned the helm in 2009 and ushered in the brave new media world with the most success, vision -- and yes, traffic. Some you will be familiar with; some might be new names. Either way, we are asking you, our loyal, smart, and attractive readers to share your thoughts on who had the biggest year in the Online Editor category (scroll down for poll): (more...)

Turns out the Tiger Woods scandal is only the beginning for TMZ's sports-related coverage. SportsByBrooks recently reported that the gossip site is expanding its reach with an upcoming sports-only blog: (more...)

video As more details emerged about the circumstances of the Tiger Woods car crash, the more suspicions were raised that there may be more to the story. Now TMZ.com has blown the reported version of events wide open - alleging domestic violence led to the injuries, and the car crash was used as a cover up. (more...)

Michael David Barrett, 48, has been arrested for interstate stalking after he filmed eight videos of EPSN reporter Erin Andrews changing in two different hotel rooms and posted them on the internet, CNN reports. (more...)

It's true -- sometimes the celebrity industrial complex is a bit much online. Take for instance, the "upskirt" pictures of a teen star (decried as foul by Gossip Cop) or the endless array of Perez Hilton-curated celeb photos defaced with crude drawings of penises. It can all get a little tiresome and arguably cross the line into immoral and illegal, but should anyone really be fighting fire and bile with rainbows and kittens? No, we're not talking about LOLcats -- it's Hallmark's new "anti-TMZ" website, Celebrity Good Life. (more...)

TMZ has posted the audio of President Obama referring to Kanye West as a "jackass" yesterday. It's an interesting listen for a number of reasons. One, Obama is responding to a reporter asking him whether his girls were as "ticked off" as the reporter's were about Taylor Swift's treatment at the VMA's. "I thought that was really inappropriate," says Obama. "Does that count as the first question?" the reporter asks, suggesting they were already on the record? Obama certainly doesn't explicitly ask to be taken off the record even after he's made the remark, though he does allude to not wanting the remark to be blown out of proportion. So much for that. Here's the rest of the exchange: (more...)

To date, the Dr. McSteamy sex tape is pushing over 2.25 mil. page view on Gawker— a refreshing reminder that Internet voyeurs love nothing more than watching celebs have sex ... or watching them lie around naked and smoke crack, as the case might be. Today Sex Watch follows Eric Dane, wife Rebecca Gayheart and crack-smoking ex-beauty queen friend Kari Ann Peniche around the Web to see just how far one sex tape can go. (more...)

Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, 28, is the youngest member of Congress and a product of the GOP's Young Guns program, which works to get young Republican talent into office. Serving in Abraham Lincoln's district, he's an honest hard-worker who began his IRA at age 14. And, if you ask NPR, he also "has the best abs." But NPR is not the first and certainly won't be the last to cover Schock, or prominently feature his abdominals. The unusual and ongoing media attention began when Huffington Post readers voted Schock the "Hottest Freshman" in the 111th Congress, to which he said, "I appreciate this honor, but my real goal is to have a 'hot' legislative record on behalf of the people I serve." (more...)

The sudden super-celebrity status of Erin Andrews appears to have driven up the value of paparazzi-style photos to the websites that publish such pictures. Websites like TMZ. But what does TMZ do when shutterbugs can't get their pics of their subjects? Track down the 911 call from same subject complaining of getting harassed! (more...)

Rex Sorgatz designed Mediaite and Gossip Cop, the new site co-founded by Mediaite publisher Dan Abrams and Gossip Cop editor Michael Lewittes. Here is his explanation of the site, which launches today. Let me ask you, what kind of person do you think Scarlett Johansson is? You have probably never met her, and I definitely have not, yet we both seemingly feel like we could describe her personality with reasonable accuracy. This is peculiar. It's not shocking to learn that humans enjoy making personality judgments based upon scant evidence. But with celebrities it seems exceptionally dubious, since we actually know literally nothing about them first-hand. Lohan, Aniston, Springsteen, Cruise -- why do all these people seem to have well-formed personas? How much of it is real and how much is manufactured? What are the sources we use to scrape together these mysterious portraits? (more...)

TMZ is not just for breaking news about celebrity deaths (and incorrectly breaking news about semi-celebrity deaths). It's also here for you sports fans. TMZ announced this morning they have obtained a video of the incident at a basketball camp earlier this month of NBA superstar LeBron James getting dunked on by a college player. It was previously reported that all tapes of the dunk were confiscated by Nike. (more...)

TMZ was famously out in front of Michael Jackson's death before any other news outlet, and Harvey Levin, the site's founder, will tell you exactly why: “This is a news operation. All we have done is applied the traditional skills of news reporting. It’s that simple.’’ Alas! Where was all that good old-fashioned reporting when TMZ misfired yesterday and reported the death of mixed martial arts fighter Kim "Kimo" Leopoldo? (more...)

While the death of Walter Cronkite may have initiated a lot of chatter bemoaning the changes that have occurred in TV news coverage since his heyday, his death also provided a great platform for the main stream media to show off its strengths, as well as its ultimate weaknesses. (more...)

Recently I was reading up on Project MKULTRA. It always amazes me that this happened, in our country, and so recently. Sometimes I need to read about it to make sure it actually, indisputably happened and isn't just a crazy conspiracy.

This time, though, I noticed this passage on the Wikipedia page:

In December 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by the U.S. Congress...

I started thinking about how this would go down today, or, say, next year, when there IS no New York Times (NB: this is not a prediction of the time-frame of the NYT's demise. Bear with me).

The name "Simon Rex" means vastly different things to different people. To some, he's the mainstream former MTV VJ and star of movies like Scary Movie 3 and sitcom What I Like About You. To others, he's "Dirt Nasty," the hip-hop parody act, who now performs in character and connects with fans on Twitter. (Sample tweet: "just got a Panamanian butt suck from a Chilean sea monkey...she look like a swamp donkey on rogaine , mayne." But Rex tells us: "Don't believe any of it, it's mostly lies, but some of it is true. I like to just be ridiculous and controversial."). Soon, you'll know him in a different role: as himself. (more...)

The Internet has been crackling with weird, random celebrity death rumors since last Thursday, when Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died. Thursday night rumors of Jeff Goldblum's demise were greatly exaggerated via Twitter (trending topic!); the actual death on Sunday of TV pitchman Billy Mays seems to have added to the actual celebrity-death trend (begun earlier last week by Ed McMahon), and exacerbated the trend-watching hysteria online (really, Al Roker?) So far, these are the false celebrity death rumors that have circulated: (more...)