Abrams' 'Gossip Cop' Worst of Both Worlds

Media weigh in on new site
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 30, 2009 10:34 AM CDT
Abrams' 'Gossip Cop' Worst of Both Worlds
In this Nov. 3, 2008 file photo, Dan Abrams arrives at the The New York Public Library's 2008 Library Lions Benefit in New York.   (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)

It seems that Dan Abrams just launched Mediaite, but he’s already back with another venture: Gossip Cop. The initial post compared it to "TMZ meets Smoking Gun," but Laura Schreffler, in the New York Daily News, deems it “sort of like TMZ meets the Huffington Post.” The first “brilliant exposé”? A piece on Angelina Jolie not moving to Washington. Asks Schreffler: “How’s that for investigative journalism?” Oh, snap! More reactions:

  • David Carr, in the New York Times, may or may not have said this with a straight face: “Having had the scales fall from its eyes, Media Decoder is going to begin reading all vital celebrity news more carefully and rigorously.”
  • The site “is poised to revolutionize the field of copping gossip,” writes Hamilton Nolan for Gawker—and anyone who has “the nerve to talk about how the media should be like, policing lobbyists and the government and shit,” as Katrina Vanden Heuvel did in an MSNBC interview with Abrams, should just pipe down.
  • Gossip Cop “is no fun,” writes Chris Rovzar for New York, citing four reasons. Most important: “We don't care whether the gossip is true. Blatantly implausible stories are run all the time, with denials included, and we'll read them anyway because of the entertainment value.”
(More gossip stories.)

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