TMZ

TMZ is a tabloid news organization owned by Fox Corporation. It made its debut on November 8, 2005, originally as a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. On September 13, 2021, Fox Corporation acquired TMZ from WarnerMedia for $50 million. The name TMZ is derived from the acronym for thirty-mile zone that was historically used in the film and television industry to refer to the so-called "studio zone"—an area with a radius centered on the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It was called the studio zone because of the number of film and television studios within it. TMZ's managing editor is Harvey Levin, a lawyer-turned-journalist who was previously a legal expert for the Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. While the TMZ website claims that it does not pay writers for stories or interviews, Levin has acknowledged that TMZ does "sometimes pay sources for leads on stories". Development Three months prior to the official launch of TMZ, America Online (AOL) had hinted that it was planning to launch a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site that would be produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions and had shown interest in launching a website featuring a focus mainly on celebrities. At the time of the launch, AOL confirmed that the site would primarily feature and consist of Hollywood gossip, including interviews, photos and video footage of celebrities and information pertaining to industry news on movies, television shows, etc.