When I start to feel guilty about reading celebrity blogs, I always defend them (to myself or to others) by describing how good the writing is. TMZ.com, Go Fug Yourself and Defamer, among others, are not really bringing any value to the internet, other than giving me a good laugh, and taking the piss out of people who are treated with often undue respect in traditional celeb media like E-Talk or Entertainment Tonight (seriously, anyone who makes a deal with Anna Nicole Smith's baby daddy and then does specials on said baby's first birthday party sickens me).
But, as a writer, one thing I appreciate is the strength of their writing teams. Active voice phrasing, sentences that punch and aren't flabby or over-written, proper grammar, clever turns of phrase...on top of being fun, they're also another venue for pros to get some much-needed work.
All that to say that this weekend Defamer.com brutalizes the respectable WSJ for a story that is inaccurate enough to sound torqued.
"The example today was the Wall Street Journal's report, "Hollywood Squeezes Stars' Pay in Slump," which is being cited everywhere to suggest that there's no money left in the movies . This is wrong. If your movie just opened huge last weekend, a studio will still back up a Brinks truck to your Hollywood Hills abode. Lauren A.E. Schuker starts out with a way-past-his-prime Eddie Murphy. But even there, she makes a muddled mess of things..."
Defamer goes onto give a detailed explanation of how she got it wrong, and how stars get paid.
It just shows that even though blogs won't replace traditional media, there is room out there for the niche websites that offer critiques and back them up with expertise.
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