How TMZ broke news of Michael Jackson's death one year ago

Gossip Cop interviewed Harvey Levin, TMZ’s executive producer. On June 25, 2009, his team broke the worldwide exclusive news of Michael Jackson’s shocking death.

June 25, 2009 started off as an ordinary day in the L.A. offices of TMZ.

In fact, when TMZ got its first tip at around 1 p.m. PST that Michael Jackson was being taken to the hospital, “it was not that alarming,” recalls Harvey Levin, explaining the singer had “been taken to the hospital many times before” for non-life threatening ailments.

“We didn’t think it was a life/death thing,” says Levin, until he received the next tip that Jackson had gone into full cardiac arrest.

And that’s when a “minor” Michael Jackson hospitalization piece turned into a “huge story.”


Check-out the Gossip Cop Interview

 

Mediagazer, Techmeme for media stories

Yes, I am a big fan of Techmeme, a tech news aggregator, that arranges all of top news links into a single, easy-to-scan page. For me, it's a compelling news resource. Following this success, the company just released Mediagazer. It has similar concept and format like Techmeme, but just for media related news. Smart move.

The media business is in tumult: from the production side to the distribution side, new technologies are upending the industry. Keeping up with these changes is time-consuming, as essential media coverage is scattered across numerous web sites at any given moment.

Mediagazer simplifies this task by organizing the key coverage in one place. We've combined sophisticated automated aggregation technologies with direct editorial input from knowledgeable human editors to present the one indispensible narrative of an industry in transition.


It's worth reading, I think. How do you think?

 

Why people blog?

Dan Blank writes an interesting post on why people blog and what we can learn from it.

Even a busy editor still want to blog. Why? The reasons:

“It forces me to connect with others.”
“Readers provide helpful and interesting comments.”
“Enables me to better connect with my audience, and get a better understanding of their focuses and thinking.”
“Blog provides another vehicle for reaching readers.”
“I enjoy having conversations with people I wouldn’t otherwise connect with.”
“It opens a dialogue between me and the industry’s manufacturers.”

That's true! The list really fits with my experience... :-D

Check-out the complete list here

News portals are top online news sources

A recent study found that people prefer news portals —like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL — as their main online news sources rather than the online edition of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times.

[via Search Engine Land]

Stop launching blogs, start contributing!

It's an interesting discussion. But one for sure: keep blogging!

Chad Mueller of Inspired Magazine said, "Let’s contribute to already established blogs instead of creating new blogs."

I know guest blogging isn’t a new concept, but when you are thinking about launching a new blog be sure to weigh out the options. Think about it, what are the main reasons for starting a blog – you want to express your thoughts. Does it really matter where your thoughts are expressed? Established blogs are always accepting guest writers...

[via @enda]

 

Why I switched from WordPress to Posterous?

My answer will be much more like a practical issue rather than a technical issue. Posterous really makes my blogging activity easier: updating post, uploading pictures or even commenting can be done just via e-mail. That's a really magical platform, I must say.

For a blogger like me, having busy to upgrade here and there and experiencing security issues (like I had when using WordPress) is really wasting my time. All I need is writing and writing --no matter where, when and how. And now, I can do that easily, thanks to Posterous.