This is a critical moment for TMZ, the celebrity website overseen by lawyer and former KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Harvey Levin.
The 4-year-old website last week broke its biggest story yet -- the death of Michael Jackson -- following up with scoops and rumors about the singer's alleged drug habit, audio of the initial 911 call from his rented mansion, and news of what it suggested was a brewing fight over custody of his children.
The performance was the most impressive in a long line of TMZ triumphs. It has broken stories that have driven Hollywood news cycles for days, including Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant in 2006, the angry and abusive voice mail Alec Baldwin left in 2007 for his 11-year-old daughter (the "30 Rock" star responded by calling Levin "a human tumor"), and earlier this year, the audiotape of Christian Bale's profanity-laced tirade on the "Terminator Salvation" film set.
Its reputation for breaking big celebrity news has made TMZ.com an online sensation, with an estimated monthly readership of 4.1 million, according to Web measurement service Quantcast.com, although it has spiked much higher during busy news periods.
"TMZ has become a wire service for the entertainment business," boasted Jim Paratore, a longtime Warner Bros. executive who partnered with Levin to launch the website in 2005 and the television show two years later.
But the Jackson drama puts the spotlight on TMZ at a delicate time. Its tactics have stoked growing outrage among publicists and government officials. Its tabloid sensibilities have made some other news organizations reluctant to cite its reporting -- including CNN, a sister company, which relied on the Los Angeles Times' reporting rather than TMZ's on the day of Jackson's death. Some advertisers remain hesitant to pitch their products on the site and the TV series. And TMZ has proven much better at generating controversy than cash for its corporate parent, Time Warner.
Nonetheless, TMZ officials seemed pleased that the Jackson scoop had taken the site to a higher level of recognition. On Friday, Levin led off the episode by bragging that the site had broken the story. And in some quarters, the scoop was seen as a triumph of new media over old. The website LA Observed praised the swiftness of TMZ's scoop and said that its accuracy displayed "the best of old-media values." Ratings for the television show are growing, and the program does especially well among the coveted, hard-to-reach 18-to-34-year-old demographic.
