Journalism We are all gossip experts

Once, when the Internet was still a innovation, almost a day did not pass without an article warning “the death of journalism”. Today, 20 years later, they sound ridiculous because practically all the news still reaches us by traditional media and professional journalists. Journalism, I can tell with some relief, has not yet reached the breaking point in the cemetery of old trades.

At least not all. But there's a category of journalists who may have gone down that road: rumor experts. The rumor is a strange aspect of our trade. In the picture, the features that are officially produced by a single journalist are actually joined by teams of ambitious youths who frequent Hungarian activities or stick to the phone in search of news. In London's most serious newspapers, which they call <x0ditarians” their specialised journalists in the rumor, the ones I know are, or high society characters who don't lose a party, or disgusting individuals, who have the ability to worry, to find only a few steps away, whenever something happens. And it's always these two who reveal the best news.

But these gentlemen are only the modern shadows of the pink chronictale specialists of our glorious past. The first newspaper to have had a gossip column was New York Times in 1840. A little later, mass entertainment arose, and famous people arrived - not only the great talents but also the people famous for their mere fame.

First, it was all about actresses, whose limited skills in acting were compensated for beauty (which in the seventy - 80 ' s, their photos were sold by millions), as well as the event - filled private life. Towards the end of the century, journalists had already become masters of the rumor, which someone has defined as “a news we like, for a person we don't like”.

In this area, no one was better than Colonel William DéAlton Man, in whose magazine, “Town Topics” featured a address book that mistreated high-level New York society: “Zone Van Elm must have a problem in the throat. Otherwise, why would he start drinking early in the morning? He had opened an office in the center and paid generously to anyone who brought him a tasty “caviar”. Housewives, shopkeepers, and rivals passed by, discovered what they knew, and pocketed the reward. Man also corrupted telegraphers to find out what they heard. He often did not immediately publish the news, but offered not to reveal them more compromising, in exchange for a loan, or an investment in one of his financial operations. Of course, “victims” never saw their money again. Eventually, Man's agent was arrested for extortion, and all fraud ended in court.

The golden years of the pink chronice were those from 1925 to 1950, and they had three pretagonists -- “lafasans famous”. Walter Winkel's feature, which deals with Broadway, was a series of short phrases similar to those shown in the news channels. Over a thousand newspapers published it, and its radio program was heard by 50 million people each week. Then there were two old noses involved in cinema, with ruthless wickedness: Heda Hopper whose reign of terror was well summed up in the name she had named her villa in Beverly Hills, “The house, built by fear” and Luela Parsons, which used the cooperation of her third husband, a urologist who cured the Venetian diseases of Holliud's inhabitants.

We'll never see people like this again, and we have to ask if after ten years, the rumors will continue to exist, as the news about celebrities already appears on the headlines. Just watch the Daily Mail, which today has the world's most popular news page, even thanks to rumors that appear in its right column. Pages like Basfid, Tmz, and Popbic spread quickly, and anyone who has had even a peripheral role in a television series already has a press office that writes in Twitter in his name, on his own love and what he ate for breakfast.

Once upon a time, the supposed extramarital relationships of television characters were discovered only by newspapers. Not anymore. Recently, the wife of one of these celebrities accused her husband of adultery on Facebook. He flatly denied it, but any of the two men were right, the most significant thing is that once the wife was suspicious of treason, she would write it on Facebook. Social networks have this effect: people confess, accuse and repeat rumors about celebrities in Twitter. There are already applications for schools where students can put in circulation bad words for friends and teachers, imitating characters like Winchell and Hopper. After all, what does Facebook serve if not to exchange things you can't open? Apparently, they're all gossip specialists now.

David Randall was.  Editor-in-chief of The Independent. Its most recent book is “Thirteen journalists almost perfect”. 

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