5 Media Myths Debunked by Michael Jackson's Death

Actually, not that different. New Media wants scoops and it will pay for them. According to an intriguing time line provided by search engine optimizer Danny Dover at SEOmoz, the first mention on June 26 of a Michael Jackson incident was not posted by celebrity gossip site TMZ.com but by x17online.com, the small website of a paparazzi agency. X17's story went up at 1:10pm Pacific time. TMZ's went up at 1:30. After TMZ posted its story, x17online.com took its version down, presumably because TMZ bought exclusive rights to the pictures. In other words, the photographers, alerted by a police scanner, got there first and sold their wares to a willing bidder, just as they have done since Weegee. And still do. O.K.! magazine bought the "last" picture of Jackson — on a stretcher, being loaded into the ambulance — for a reported $500,000, a figure most outlets find implausibly high.