*TMZ.com will celebrate its 10th birthday in November, and it’s apparent that the entire celebrity news-driven operation hasn’t just gotten older, but also a lot wider.
To be blunt, it has picked up weight.
“We have four websites. We have three television shows, we have a bus tour. We have a business office,” managing editor Harvey Levin told the TCA in January. “We have a lot of camera guys on staff. So, when you look at the whole operation, it’s close to 200.”
Levin, a lawyer who takes pride in ensuring the site’s stories are as accurate as possible before posting, says part of their success comes from his strategy of putting workers in one big open room, as opposed to separate offices and walled-in cubicles.
He said: “When I was in local news, it always bothered me that I would look through this glass window, and I would see, like, five people sitting around a table, and they would come up with an agenda for the day. And what occurred to me was, God, there are so many people in this room. And I’m not just talking about the reporters but, like, camera guys who are out all day long and people with contacts. And it’s, like, why isn’t everybody coming up with ideas?
“I mean, you know, those five people are smart, but they may not know something because of their age, because of their ethnicity, because of their contacts. There’s all sorts of things. There’s social situations that, if you open it up to the room, you can get so much more.”
Below, Levin explains how a worker from the IT portion of the room ended up helping to break a story.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
