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Psst. Gossip Is Big Business

Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto loves his work, the booming business of buzz.

"I kinda float through a nightclub, and that causes people to come up and spill their guts to me," Musto says.

He shows up every evening at the latest hot spot, wrinkled notes in hand, ready to chronicle the rich and famous -- who's up, who's down, who's nobody, details CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Susan Spencer.

"Everyone loves to gossip. In high school we gossiped about the high school cheerleader and the football captain: 'Oh I hate them because they're so happy.' We want to see celebrities brought down a notch -- that's the real power of gossip," Musto says.

Musto had just left a mob scene outside Julia Roberts' new play where crowds gather nightly hoping just to see Roberts dash to her car.

But celebrity obsession is more than a cultural phenomenon these days. It's also a huge business and gossip is king.

Just ask Bonnie Fuller, executive director of American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer and Star magazine, which saw its ad sales rise 84 percent last year.

She's built a career of feeding the public's insatiable appetite for gossip.

"Listen, it's genetic. We're nosy. We've been nosy since the dawn of time. I think people were probably gossiping, you know, way back in cave man times: 'OK, what's going on in your tribe? What's the tribe leader really think? Who's he gonna pick for his wife?'" Fuller quips.

Fuller says Star fact checks everything, although it does routinely use anonymous sources and occasionally hits a snag -- remember Jessica Simpson's pregnancy?

"It turned out that the sources that had been very good on other things were just wrong on this one, but other pregnancies we've been right on," Fuller says.

The whole question of how much to believe and how reporters cover gossip has come under close scrutiny of late, especially in light of scandalous allegations about a New York Post columnist who wrote for the famous Page Six.

"Page Six has a lot to do with the buzz in this town and if you're in Page Six, as I've been, it makes your day. Your phone is ringing off the hook. You're a celebrity for a day if it's a good item," Musto says.

"And if it's a bad item," Musto adds, "you want to kill yourself."

Reporter William Sherman got the scoop on the Page Six scandal, and, even more delicious for gossip mavens, he works for the Daily News, arch rival of the Post.

It all started, Sherman reported, when businessman Ron Burkle, known in Page Six as the "Babe loving billionaire," became unhappy with items by freelance columnist Jared Stern.

When his complaints went nowhere, Burkle met with Stern and secretly taped the meetings. The FBI was there and now is investigating because on tape, Stern seems to suggest that, for enough money, he could protect Burkle from bad press.

"Finally Burkle at the end said, 'Look, what do I have to do? How much do I have to pay?' And Stern said, 'Essentially $100,000 down and $10,000 a month for the next 12 months,'" according to Sherman.

"I know the gossip world is kind of a tangled web of favors and backstabbing. I knew there was a subtle insidious corruption, conflicts of interest, publicists going too far, relationships gone awry. I never imagined something this blatant. I was stunned," Musto admits.

Even the staid New York Times put the story on page one. Stern insists it's all just a big misunderstanding -- he wasn't looking for a pay-off but for an investment in the clothing company he also owns.

But ethicist Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute says perhaps this scandal now will make the public more skeptical of the gossip press.

"I don't think a lot of people in the public who consume both serious news and gossip had thought much about the different standards until now," McBride says.

"These stories are talking about the methods the gossip reporters use. How those methods are different from maybe what a serious journalist would use?" McBride asks.

By that she means accepting gifts from publicists, trading favors, using rumors, anonymous sources and, of course, blind items.

"You'll see something like, 'What Hollywood movie star who starred in three Luke Skywalker movies was seen at a restaurant,' you know, 'kissing another guy?' Where they actually don't say the guy's name, but hint at it so everybody knows who it is," McBride says.

"Journalism is about precision and accuracy. And if you can't say it because you don't have enough reporting, you don't say it," McBride says.

Author Mary Louise Oates covered the gossip beat for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s and says of the Page Six story, "It certainly has made us all look at this and say, 'What are we reading and why are we reading this stuff?'"

Referring to the several years reporters declined to print that film star Rock Hudson was gay, Oates says "Many people figured it out, but nobody was going to put that in the paper." However, she adds, "I think now there is nothing that people won't either say about themselves or people won't flak to the papers."

An even bigger worry, she says, may be the impact that the big business of gossip is having on coverage of legitimate news.

"The rules, the mesh that kind of separated gossip from real news, has kind of gotten bigger and bigger holes. I mean it used to be you had to have two sources. They both had to be reliable sources. Now I think half the folks are just talking to their toaster ovens," Oates says.

Fuller sounds less sympathetic and more realistic, maintaining that celebrities expect the outrageous attention to their every move: "It goes with territory."

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