Two zippy quotes from Allison Hope Weiner‘s 6.25 N.Y. Times piece about Harvey Levin’s TMZ. One is Levin himself saying that despite initial reservations about launching a celebrity website, “I started seeing that if you don’t have time periods and publishing cycles, you can publish on demand and beat everybody.” The other is a non-identified publicist equating Levin’s power with that of columnist Walter Winchell in his 1940s heyday. “If you have something you know [TMZ] will like, you tip them to it,” he says. “It’s kind of the old way you dealt with the old-time gossip columnists…you have to occasionally feed them an item…you have to be in the game with them…if you’re a publicist and the only time you call up is to complain about an item, they’ll laugh at you.”
