@ EconCeleb: Harvey Levin: ‘We Don’t Want To Be A Red Carpet’
By Staci D. Kramer - Wed 23 Jul 2008 03:42 PM PST
As managing editor of TMZ.com, Harvey Levin can be a celeb’s best friend or worst nightmare—not that he’s trying to be either. That’s coming through loud and clear in our second keynote Q&A of the afternoon here at EconCeleb. Interviewer Charlie Koones, former president and publisher of Variety and former board member of our parent company ContentNext Media, put it bluntly from the start when he asked: “It seems like you one day said, ‘Screw it. I’m not playing that game. Is that an accurate portrayal?” Levin was just as blunt: “Yes.”
He explained the thinking behind the WB-AOL (NYSE: TWX) joint venture that borrows some of its psychology from his previous show Celebrity Justice: “If a publicist was pissed at a celebrity show, they could get the story pulled by saying you’re never going to get on again if you run this story. ... (I decided) we can do an honest show and not be beholden to anybody. We’re going to be really honest and tell real stories. ... It’s not as if we don’t work with publicists. We do. We tell them, ‘work with us once and if we screw with you, never work with us again. Try us once and if we’re fair with you, try us again.’” Lots more after the jump...
Put another way: “We don’t want to be a red carpet.”
-- The agencies: Rafat told Levin and attendees during Q&A that we’re missing the big agencies from today’s lineup because they said they didn’t want to appear with TMZ. That doesn’t stop them from cooperating with TMZ, though, at least based on Levin’s response. “Do agencies play a material role in what we’re doing? Of course, they do.”
-- What won’t he do: “I won’t do stolen documents, I won’t do medical records if someone hands it.” He tossed someone out of his office for trying to shop Michael Jackson documents because he was sure they were stolen from a law firm. “It would have been an amazing story. It was legit, it was a real story, it would have gotten huge traffic. I just wouldn’t do it. ... When you’re tempted to do it, as soon as you open the door to it, you’re dead. You’ve got to feel like you can turn a story away and still survive.” Even Levin can still be shocked: “When Britney Spears was in the hospital, it was shocking to me but we were contacted by medical personnel. ... You really have to draw the line.” They don’t skip medical stories—TMZ broke the Dennis Quaid story about his newborn twins being overdosed and might report on how Spears is doing anecdotally during a hospital stay. The hardest decision Levin’s had to make: publishing Alec Baldwin’s voice-mail tirade aimed at his daughter.
-- Celeb overdose: No, not the kind TMZ reports about ... Zsa Zsa Gabor’s current husband Prince Frederick von Anhalt achieved real celeb status during Anna Nicole Smith “baby’s daddy” story, in part because TMZ.com thought he was amusing. Then he started trying to get attention. “I stopped putting him on. It started feeling like we were a tool.”
Posted in: Companies, Time Warner, AOL, Entertainment, Conferences, EconCeleb
Tags: harvey levin, charlie koones, tmz,
