Everyone, at one point or another, reads TMZ or watches one of the two TMZ TV shows. And if you don't — but, let's be honest, you do — you're still coming in contact with the celebrity news juggernaut, because every major news outlet winds up covering TMZ's scoops.
On Monday, The New Yorker published its anticipated expose of the organization and its founder, Harvey Levin, complete with several of its own scoops. The gist of Nicholas Schmidle's deeply reported story is that TMZ operates like the Hoover-era FBI, with a broad network of tipsters throughout Hollywood, many of whom are paid handsomely, transforming Tinsel Town into "a city of stool pigeons." You should read the entire story, but until you can dedicate the time to devour all 11,000 words, here's a glimpse at some of the biggest revelations.
1. TMZ leveraged an unflattering video of Justin Bieber for smaller scoops.
TMZ paid roughly $80,000 for a video, taken from Bieber's stolen laptop, of the singer casually dropping the N-word. But it decided not to run the video and, in the following months, landed numerous exclusives about the singer.
2. The organization has sources inside major companies.
Citing leaked emails, The New Yorker said employees of Delta Airlines and limousine service B.L.S. regularly tip off TMZ. It's also trying to get sources inside Uber.
3. TMZ paid roughly $205,000 for two videos of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice hitting his then fiancee in the elevator of an Atlantic City hotel.
The site got the video after a surveillance officer at the hotel secretly recorded it on his cell phone. (The New Yorker, citing an anonymous source, also said TMZ paid just $5,000 for video of Beyonce's sister Solange hitting Jay z in an elevator, contradicting a New York Post report saying it paid $250,000.)
4. TMZ pays for many of its scoops—a journalistic quagmire—but it also lands big stories through good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting.
The organization, for instance, has three full-time reporters stationed at L.A. courts. The Los Angeles Times has one.
5. Many employees described TMZ as a hostile and misogynistic workplace.
According to employees, the piece reports that Levin shames his staff publicly. "Harvey Levin would have been a great dictator," Rory Waltzer, a former cameraman, told The New Yorker, "he is charming enough so that you want to follow him, but terrifying enough so that you don't want to fail."
6. Levin seems to be motivated by a fairness gap, that is, how celebs are treated compared with everyone else.
His father owned a liquor store and was routinely targeted by police for selling to minors, according to The New Yorker, while nightclubs catering to underage celebrities flouted the law and were never brought to justice. This seems to color his view of Hollywood. "Harvey believed that every celebrity was fake, and that it was his job to expose that," Lewis D'Vorkin, a former AOL executive, said.
7. Ellen DeGeneres tried to apologize to Levin for implying on her show that he outed gay people.
After Levin protested, DeGeneres, according to The New Yorker, called him to apologize. Levin refused to take the call. He also refused a gift basket that DeGeneres sent over.
8. Alec Baldwin is no fan of Levin or TMZ.
OK, so maybe this isn't a major revelation, but it does provide this incredible quote from Baldwin, whose voicemail to his daughter (in which he called her a thoughtless little pig) was published by TMZ. "There was a time when my greatest wish was to stab Harvey Levin with a rusty implement and watch his entrails go running down my forearm, in some Macbethian stance. I wanted him to die in my arms, while looking into my eyes, and I wanted to say to him, 'Oh, Harvey, you thoughtless little pig.' He is a festering boil on the anus of American media."
Read the full story here.
