Veteran journalist and entertainment writer Jo Piazza knows a thing or two about celebrity culture.
Jo polished her writing skills at Columbia University School of Journalism and in the gossip pages of the Daily News writing for Rush & Malloy.
STORY: Is Kris Jenner Heading To Dancing With The Stars?
As an expert on all things celebrity, the U Penn Economics graduate has appeared on television and writes for the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Fox News, reporting on the antics of some of the biggest and boldest names in Hollywood, music and beyond.
Her new book Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, (Open Road Integrated Media, $9.99 Kindle Edition) digs deeper into all things celebrity, especially how they make their money!
On Monday we spoke to Ms. Piazza by phone about her book and about the present state of celebrity culture. Check it out!
GlobalGrind: Tell us about your book.
Jo Piazza: The book takes a look at the business behind a celebrity and the business behind celebrity news, celebrity album sales, ticket sales, celebrity fragrances and how celebrities are making money in ways that consumers never really would have thought of.
How did you get the idea for the book?
I was a gossip columnist at the New York Daily News for a long time and when I left the paper I was freelancing. I started to write a lot about the business behind celebrity and realized that it was kind of untouched. You see all of the pretty things celebrities do, but no one really knows exactly how it works. I think the average consumer assumes that these people are multi-millionaires because they act in movies or they sing. But with the rise of celebrities that are famous for being famous, like all these reality stars, they are now making more than the movie stars and they are doing it in ways that we wouldn’t necessarily expect.
I think it was important to bring that to consumers’ attention so they will know what they are spending their money on, especially in light of everything that is happening with the Occupy Movement today.
We should understand why there is this gigantic variety between what someone who is on television makes, and the average American person who is making about $40 thousand a year, compared to what one of these celebrities can make from one Tweet.
[pagebreak]
Are you surprised how grandiose celebrity culture has become?
I am and it has changed so much! I think the issue of credibility really comes into play these days. Five years ago, when I started writing about celebrity culture, there was one, maybe two, weekly tabloid magazines and People and US were the centers of [that world] and now there are six. There are thousands upon thousands of celebrity gossip sites.
Beyond that, celebrities have their own Tweets, so they’re essentially controlling their own news distribution with all of that. In a way it’s capitalism at its best. Brands are realizing that they have these huge platforms and, rather than paying a million dollars for an endorsement or an ad, which has been around for a hundred years, they can slip them a check for $10 thousand to have them insert one of these brands into their life. We are flipping through Us Weekly, like, ‘Oh, Jennifer Garner loves Starbucks, so we should love Starbucks’ but we don’t realize that celebrities are being paid for these things.
You have a degree in economics, what made you decide to go into journalism?
I was always interested in journalism. I wrote for the Daily Pennsylvanian while I was at U Penn and then I got an internship at the New York Times and was bitten by the bug. Then I met George Rush who was the gossip columnist for the New York Daily News and he needed an assistant. I needed a job and I didn’t know a damn thing about celebrity culture. The first night that I went out, it was for a birthday party for Diddy at Marquee and I ended up talking to Jay-Z for an hour. I had no idea who he was, I had no celebrity knowledge and I came into the office and said I talked to this guy last night named Jay and they showed me a photo and were like, ‘Was it this guy? We should fire you.’ And I said, ‘I will do better, I will get flash cards!’
[pagebreak]
(function () { if (window.orimPS == undefined) { window.orimPS = ‘initStarted’; var oSc = document.createElement(‘script’); oSc.type = ‘text/javascript’; oSc.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’) + ‘access.openroadmedia.com/api/getPlayerScriptIF.php?&distribution_id=474&distribution_code=&size=medium&embedver=2_0’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(oSc, s); } var intId = setInterval(function () { if (typeof (OrimPController) !== ‘undefined’) { clearInterval(intId); if (window.orimPC == undefined) { window.orimPC == null; window.orimPC = new OrimPController(); } } }, 30); })();
What is your favorite thing about celebrity culture?
When I left the newspaper I was a little burned out by celebrity culture. I wasn’t even able to watch a movie, or pick up a magazine because I had seen how the sausage was made for so long. Writing the book exposes even more of that. But now that I have such a good grip on it, I do like it the same way everyone else does — it’s escapist, it is fun and more than that, it gives us this universal water cooler conversation. We don’t live in a tiny village anymore where you can say, ‘Did you hear about the butcher and his wife?’ but we can say did you hear about Kim Kardashian, it gives us something to talk about with a perfect stranger.
It looks like the most brilliant marketing genius of our time is Kris Jenner!
She is an evil marketing genius! I say this all the time. If Herman Cain, or one of the other Republican presidential candidates, had her as their campaign manager, they would win. She was able to turn a sex tape into lemonade and a fake wedding into pure gold for her family. She should be running a Fortune 500 company.
Models are getting magazine covers back after celebrities dominated them for a long time. Do you think the public will ever get tired of celebrity driven things?
I don’t. People ask me about that all the time. I think the reason we have so many celebrities now is because the consumer demand is there for it. The consumer is demanding more and more celebrity news and the celebrities can’t fill that void so these fake celebrities, who are willing to put their lives out there, both the good and the bad, they came and they have filled that hole. As much as people say we have reached the peak of saturation, I don’t think we have. We are making celebrities out of more and more ridiculous people these days. Now we’ve got the Teen Moms, not to mention the cast of Jersey Shore. I think it is going to get bigger and bigger as these brands realize that they will make money off these celebrities, it is just going to keep happening. And how much celebrities can make is just going to keep growing and growing.
Without giving too much away, how many celebs did you interview for your book?
I did about 1,000 interviews with celebrities, magazine editors, lawyers, a lot of music execs, especially when I was researching my chapter on rap beef. Some celebrities are on the record, some celebrities are off the record, a lot of the background information in there is coming from celebrity camps, so they didn’t want to give away all of the dirty secrets on the record. Except for Spencer Pratt who wanted to give away every dirty secret. He was so forthcoming with all of the dirty, dirty ways that he and Heidi made money. There is a lot of juicy, insider stuff in there and most of it hasn’t been analyzed like this before.
Were there any celebrities you were fond of personally, when you were a teenager?
My two celebrity crushes from childhood have carried over: Michael J. Fox and Jon Bon Jovi! I have never actually interviewed Michael, but Allen Tipper Gore introduced me to Bon Jovi at a book party for their daughter once and it was probably the most exciting moment of my gossip career.
