Sorting Through Online Celebrity Gossip
BURKHARDT: Want to get the scoop on your favorite stars? Do you know how to separate the fact from the fiction? Well, there are a lot of Web sites to help you out. Natalie Pawelski talked with Ted Casablanca, gossip guru with E! Online, to get some tools for getting the skinny.</s>NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): There is so much Hollywood gossip out there, where do you go to get the real scoop?</s>TED CASABLANCA, GOSSIP COLUMNIST, E! ONLINE: Well, of course, you start at www.eonline.com. I have two favorite areas on E! Online. Of course, one of them is my column, "The Awful Truth."</s>PAWELSKI: As it should be. Dish dirt juicy bits, "The Awful Truth."</s>CASABLANCA: And "Fashion Police." People love it. I do, too. And that brings up a whole another area in gossip. It -- people are almost just as interested in what people are wearing as what they are doing.</s>PAWELSKI: "High and Mighty, Britney Spears." That's nice headline. I would be happy if I were she. You know, I get the feeling some of the other sites that are out there on Web are quite good, and some are less than good. What are some of the ones you steer people toward?</s>CASABLANCA: My favorites are Liz Smith, I have always been a big fan of. And you know, she gets a lot of heat from people saying that she apologizes for stars, and you know, she is just kissy, kissy, kissy. Well you know, she is kissy, kissy, kissy, but she is also like, you know, she will shove it to you when you deserve it. "The New York Post" does a great job with page six. One of the best gossip columns in the business. Now, they are reliable, very well reported, and they do everything East Coast, not just Hollywood. "The Smoking Gun" is great, it's a lot of fun, it's like diva factoid. It's all about contracts and back stage, and you know, the nitty-gritty legal line of, you know, what happened and who wanted what in their dressing room, and it's great fun.</s>PAWELSKI: Has the Internet changed how people talk about celebrities and how people get their gossip?</s>CASABLANCA: It has helped it and it's harmed it, I think. It has put out so many outlets that you just have to learn to pick and choose.</s>PAWELSKI: Tell me about this place.</s>CASABLANCA: IMDB is great. They're like the dictionary of the entertainment Web scene. And they will give you a filmography of the star, where they were born, where they went to school.</s>PAWELSKI: Who are some of the other gossip writers who are doing a really good job?</s>CASABLANCA: Well, Jeannie Williams does a great job at "USA Today." And she is -- she's like a hard-edged gossip reporter. She does not throw in a lot of the bad French and, you know, poopy words that I do in my column. You know, she is like news, baby. And she is a good reporter. You know the information is well checked out. Not all columnists have that reputation. MSNBC, Jeannette Walls, also does a very good job. She's a good reporter.</s>PAWELSKI: Well, what about the official studio sites?</s>CASABLANCA: Well, they've got lots of information. Is it the information you want? Well, if you want to read a lot of publicity, yeah, it's for you, but if you want to know more of, you know, what was happening on the set, studio sites are not the place to go.</s>PAWELSKI: Some stars, like we have seen Melanie Griffith, have their own Web sites and they try to fight back the gossip, they try to fight the gossip that's out there. What do you think about that?</s>CASABLANCA: I think on one hand it's great. It shows that she takes a concern, that she cares about what people are saying out in the public, but it's also -- it's a Pandora's box. You are making more people talk about, oh, well, look, she is not really denying it, so it must be true. You are just -- you are opening up the discussion even further.</s>PAWELSKI: So, is all of this just for fun, or does it really matter in the large scheme of things?</s>CASABLANCA: It's a billion-dollar business, multibillion-dollar business. Of course, it matters. And it's fun.</s>BURKHARDT: If you missed any of those Web sites, check out our site, CNN.com/thedot. We have got them all listed there. Later on CNNdotCOM, how the sink-or-swim Internet economy is making some folks happy, even some who lost their jobs in the dot-com bust. Stay with us.