Army on gossip columns

Reacting to the scandal about extortion, horse trading and freebies at Page Six, former Variety columist Army Archerd—whose marketing slogan is "Hollywood's first blogger"—blogs a tale out of his past.

I know all about gossip columns like Page Six now under siege at the N.Y. Post: I helped write a portion of a gossip column when I was columnist Harrison Carroll's legman at the L.A. Herald-Express.

The final paragraph of the column was "Today's Puzzle." When we ran out of "puzzles" one day I just made up this one: "What producer should know that his wife knows about a certain blonde starlet?" The night that column appeared, Harrison and I were sitting at his regular booth at Ciro's on the Sunset Strip. During the evening, no fewer than a half dozen "starlets" stopped at our table and said, "Harrison, how cold you do that to me."

Also: Richard Kim of The Nation thinks the New York Times went overboard in its coverage of the scandal.