 Who slapped whom in a catfight, drunkenly danced on a table, and hooked up with so-and-so hits the Web faster than you can say “rehab.” Meet the folks behind our favorite celebrity gossip sites. It’s a dangerous job, but someone has to do it. By Akiba Solomon
Last year, when the black celebrity gossip blog concreteloop.com suggested that the supermodel Iman had jacked-up feet (a close shot revealed a bunion poking out of her black strappy sandals), one visitor to the Web site took exception: Iman herself. Writing on her Myspace page a day after the world was told she needed some serious Dr. Scholl’s, the Somalian beauty joked that in a newer picture she had decided to cover up her feet “because Concrete Loop would say how ugly they were.”
It says less about her feet, of course, than it does about the growing number of independently owned and operated blogs dishing up sharp-tongued, trash-talking commentary on black celebrities—namely that everybody reads them. Yet most of us know little or nothing about the bloggers doling out the latest on Jay and Bey’s relationship or Bobby Brown’s antics. Here, UPTOWN chats with four of the minds behind some of the biggest and most notorious black gossip and entertainment sites about what they do, why they do it, and how they feel about serving up the sweetest taboo: other people’s business.
Fred Mwangaguhunga, 33
Founder and Editor in Chief, mediatakeout.com
With headquarters in New York City, Mwangaguhunga’s two-year-old site is, according to him, “the most visited black Web site in the world,” getting 110 million page views a month.
What were you doing before you started MediaTakeOut?
I went to law and business school and practiced law for five years. Then I cofounded an online laundry and dry cleaning service and sold that after two years.
How did you go from washing people’s dirty laundry to airing it?
The laundry business started off slow, but after we landed a few famous clients, magazines started writing about us. Suddenly, we were popular. At that point I realized the power of celebrity. That made me a lot more interested in stars.
-- Angel Laws, 23
Founder, Creator, and Editor, concreteloop.com
Laws, a college student who blogs from her Jacksonville, N.C., home, founded the site in 2005 and gets 100,000 unique visitors a day.
What were you doing before you started running Concrete Loop full-time?
I was in college. I’m taking a break, but I should be going back soon to finish my bachelor’s. I’ve only got five more classes left.
Where do you go to school?
One time I had a psycho person come to campus and harass me, so I don’t want to say.
Is Concrete Loop profitable enough for you to support yourself?
Yes, but it’s not easy. I make money from advertising, but after taxes, most of it goes back into the site.
--
Natasha Eubanks, 26
Founder and CEO, young, black & fabulous
Eubanks, a Chicago and New Orleans native, founded the Young, Black & Fabulous (TheYBF.com) in July 2005, making it one of the first modern black gossip sites to hit it big. She gets about 400,000 visitors a day.
Why did you start Young, Black & Fabulous?
I’ve been obsessed with entertainment and celebrity gossip for as long as I can remember. Following it was a pastime for me. But sites like E! and people.com would never really talk about black people. I realized that I should just do it myself.
Did you set out to do it full-time?
No. I was enrolled in law school when I started YBF. Blogging was just a hobby. I didn’t even know what I was doing. Some days, I’d stay up for 24 hours straight teaching myself how to set up the site.
-- Marv Frazier, 27
Editor, bossip.com
Created in 2006, Bossip prides itself as gossip for the hard core, or as its
tagline puts it, Henny Without Any Coke. The site gets 700,000 visitors daily.
Do you blog full-time?
Besides writing most of the content for Bossip, I’m the CEO of Moguldom Media Group. We have Lossip, a Latin American gossip site; MingXingYao, a Chinese gossip site; Livesteez, an urban social networking site; and FListed.com, a site geared toward the Maxim crowd. We call that content hot celebrity snatch. I actually came up with that phrase.
Are people surprised that you’re a woman?
[Laughs] Yes. I like the fact that nobody knows that I’m a girl unless they talk to me. I try to keep my gender ambiguous.
-- To read more about these masters of blogging, check out our summer '08 issue. And don't forget to take a look at our in-house blog roll: blogs.uptownlife.net!
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