Is TMZ a legit news organization?

I'd also bet their web site gets more clicks in a day than the top 10 (maybe even 20) newspapers combined.

 

People love celebrity bullshit. Always have, always will. And there has always been and always will be media of some kind catering to that fascination.
TMZ is just a multi-platform "Confidential."

 

Far be it for me from the old-school world of traditional no-pay-for-stories world to criticize TMZ. If they have the discretionary funds to pay for scoops, more power to 'em. Give me ten seconds and I can think of plenty of "sins" this generation of traditional media power brokers is committing far worse than paying sources.

 

TMZ is legit.
We've got to accept it. There is a demand for the news they deliver.
And they do indeed deliver.

 

On second thought, maybe they don't always get these things right:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/07/tmz_falls_for_hoax.php

 

TMZ.com scored the Jordan Crawford dunk over LeBron James.

I was thinking how if any media member had video of that, and it got out, Nike probably would never let them come to one of its events again.

 

TMZ somehow independently confirmed the death of a man who wasn't dead and wasn't in fact even close to death. This leads me to doubt that many of their "confirmed reports" are any such things.

http://mmajunkie.com/news/15600/still-reeling-from-false-death-reports-kimo-leopoldo-searching-for-answers-apologies.mma

 

Lots of "real" news organizations ran with it. I don't blame TMZ for that – and I don't hold them to much of a standard, the M.J. scoop notwithstanding.