He once said People magazine was like crack to him.ĥ. The site was founded in November of 2005 by Levin, who started his career teaching 'with the law faculty at the University of Miami' before he switched gears and started working in journalism. Levin started out in law, but converted to a celebrity journalist thanks to People magazine. “I can’t tell you how many times we got calls from Britney Spears, or her people, who called to say, ‘She’s going to get a tan,’” one staff member told Schmidle.Ĥ. 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.’” The actor finished with, 'He is a festering boil on the anus of American media.” However, other celebrities, like Britney Spears, can't get enough. He told The New Yorker, “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. Celebrities have a love-hate relationship with the site - and with Levin.Īlec Baldwin has some MAJOR beef with the site, which published a heated voicemail he left his daughter back in 2007.

Hundreds of court and legal documents file in and out of the building every day, regarding celebrity arrests, lawsuits, and other scandals.ģ.

The site broke the news of Michael Jackson's death in 2009. The site depends on tips from sources, and they get more than 100 every single day. Schmidle was unable to talk directly with the site's founder and 'dictator,' Harvey Levin, who has not yet commented on the piece, either.īelow are the craziest and most surprising facts we learned from the exposé. The New Yorker, a magazine known for its deep dives into topics that many of readers find hard to grasp in one sitting, sent in a reporter, Nicholas Schmidle, to get his own dirt on the site, its origins, and its methods. So, how did the TMZ empire begin? Add how has it become this blend of celebrity trash and treasure? But, in either case, its main goal is to keep the never-ending rumor mill churning. TMZ is, at its core, more focused on investigative reporting than amateur fluff pieces.

Last month, the site attracted over 17 million unique visitors, according to Quantcast.Ĭhances are, much to their chagrin, most media outlets turn to TMZ as their No. Regardless of the punny headlines and obnoxious all-caps captions, the site has always soared in page views. When you think of TMZ, you probably think of celebrity mugshots (ahem, Khloé Kardashian), surveillance camera footage (who can forget that disturbing Ray Rice video?), and countless, somewhat sleazy paparazzi pictures ( here, here, and here).

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