Some of the New York Daily News staffers who will star in Bravo’s upcoming reality show Tabloid Wars hoped to win over critics for the network’s semi-annual Television Critics Association presentation to TV writers (the network flew them out to the Pasadena Ritz for a 30-minute panel).
Gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy, city reporter Kerry Burke, and Deputy Metropolitan Editor Gregory Gittrich took the stage with executive producers Ted Skillman and Belisa Balaban.
Asked whether having all those intrusive reality producers hovering had any effect on their ability to report stories, soft-spoken Gittrich said there was an "initial apprehension by the vast majority of the people" about just that.
One who didn’t object? Rush. He liked the cameras for the access they helped him get to celebrities who "sometimes want to just blow past" print reporters, he told what he assumed was a sympathetic audience of print newsmen.
"If you have a crew, Leonardo DiCaprio would stop for a moment at The Aviator figuring you were television and then be sort of flummoxed as to why the cameras were on Joanna [Molloy] and I [sic] rather than Leo."
Tabloid Wars debuts July 24 at 9 p.m.
