User:Phrynefisher/gossipedits

The precursors to gossip columnists were "society columnists" who wrote for newspapers in the 19th and 20th centuries. James Gordon Bennett is credited with first creating this position at the New York Herald in 1840.

Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist famous in the 1930s and 1940s and the first to have a syndicated column, used political, entertainment, and social connections to mine information and rumors, which he either published in his column On Broadway or used for trade or blackmail to accumulate more power. He has been referred to as "the most feared journalist" of his era.