LaineyGossip started as an email to a small group of friends and colleagues in 2003, and has since grown into the website you see today. It was the springboard to my (Lainey) career as an entertainment reporter with eTalk and co-host on CTV's daytime talk show The Social. The website and these shows put me in front of the celebrities we've discussed here for the better part of 20 years, including covering the Red Carpet at the Oscars, Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals, the Royal Weddings, and other top tier events worldwide.
If you're new to LaineyGossip, you'll find that we try to go beyond the surface of pop culture and provide insightful analysis, reviews, and interpretations on what has increasingly become a very noisy space. It wasn't always like that, and in our earlier days we contributed to some of the seedier, inappropriate, and often hurtful ways that celebrities were discussed and scrutinised 2000s and early 2010s. I address some of that in the Q&A below. Since then, however, we've taken great pride in looking at pop culture through a wider lens, and from a group of writers with varied backgrounds and lived experiences.
You won't often find news breaking here, but you will find a more refined take on some of the salacious reactions to pop culture and celebrity news that we're hit with in our social media feeds, driven by increasingly skewed algorithms and sophisticated PR machines that power Hollywood. And we try to sprinkle in some fun while we're at it.
We hope you enjoy what we do both here at LaineyGossip and at our sister site "The Squawk", where we've cultivated what we think is a supportive, engaging alternative to open Social Media, and where our members discuss what we're writing about on LaineyGossip as well as some pretty random threads that break out. Check it out if you're tired of fighting with trolls on Twitter.
If you'd like to learn more, below are some frequently asked questions about our site.
- Why don't you allow comments on your site?
- What is The Squawk and why would I want to subscribe?
- Lainey, some of your past articles are very offensive. How do you explain your behaviour?
- There are too many ads on your site! Can you get rid of them?
- How do I know if you're recommending a product to me because you like it, or if you're just trying to sell me something without my knowing about it?
Q: Why don't you allow comments on your site?
We've debated this for quite some time and have always landed on the same answer, and that is that if you provide a forum for people to leave comments on a website page without adequate controls, the discussion inevitably deteriorates to base levels. However, we have found a better way for our readers to engage with us and each other in recent years, which brings us to the next question...
Q: What is The Squawk and why would I want to subscribe?
The Squawk is our answer to website comments. It's a lot more than that and you can read about it here (if you're new to Substack and don't yet want to sign up when, click the "Not yet..." link in grey to be taken to the home page so you can check it out), but at its core The Squawk is a sister site to LaineyGossip where readers who are invested in and enjoy what we do at LaineyGossip.com can engage in a lively community without the aggressive garbage that happens in 'free' forums and on open social media. Discussions on The Squawk are often thoughtful and supportive, and we're thrilled with the response we've had since its launch.
Q: Lainey, some of your past articles are very offensive. How do you explain your behaviour?
Some of my earliest work on this site was indeed racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic and I am truly sorry for it. I started this blog in the early 2000s, at a time when snarking on celebrities in a performatively cruel way on the internet was part of the online culture. I thrived on and fed into that culture. I carelessly used offensive monikers, nicknames, and shameful critiques of body image and sexuality. I was brash, inappropriate, and said some incredibly offensive things about many celebrities. And in the process I offended those who have come to expect more of this site in the years that followed.
Even though the work in the 2000s was hurtful and harmful, we have also made efforts since in acknowledging these blindspots and shortcomings, confronting unconscious bias, and advocating for change. I have been exposed to more diverse perspectives and those views are reflected in my writing and in the voices represented on this site. I have actively sought out diverse voices to contribute content, and have changed the way I approach the dissection of the celebrity ecosystem. But I can do better still and I hope you continue to join us.
I've been acknowledging my offensive behaviour for many years. This post sums it up. I am sorry for my past sins. I understand that accountability is not temporary and must be ongoing. I also understand that forgiveness is not guaranteed. If that is where you stand, thank you for taking the time to visit when you did.
Starting in October 2020 we've attempted to remove some of the most offensive and triggering words and expressions that appeared on this blog. Some posts have been deleted, while other have been edited. This is not an attempt to hide from my past, but having acknowledged and faced it both on this site and on television, I also feel it is important to remove those terms over time so we don't continue to offend and trigger those who were most affected by them. We will continue to run a disclaimer above those old posts, but we've attempted to identify and remove the most hurtful and offensive terms from the site.
Q: There are too many ads on your site! Can you get rid of them?
There is no fee to visit the site. We incur thousands of dollars worth of expenses to cover site infrastructure including hosting and delivery, paying our staff and writers, buying licenses for the photos we post, and a number of other expenses which advertising covers. Added to that, a good portion of internet users have taken to using ad blockers to view the sites they visit, and that places an additional burden on us to recover the cost of their visits. That said, we are very mindful of keeping a balance between monetizing website visits and maintaining a good reader experience, and we welcome any feedback you have.
However, if you'd prefer to view the site without ads, or with a limited ad experience, we now offer paid options to do so. Please click on "sign in" or "sign up" at the top of the site and choose one of the paid, ad-free or ad-lite options.
Q: How do I know if you're recommending a product to me because you like it, or if you're just trying to sell me something without my knowing about it?
Beyond the banners that you see around and within the text of the articles, we have several other ways to monetize the site. In the past we occasionally wrote sponsored articles that are clearly marked as advertisements with labels next to the title. We've also started to use a fantastic affiliate program called ShopMy, and feature affiliate links in certain articles to either direct readers to the items celebrities are seen wearing, or (often much cheaper) dupes that can be purchased directly through the various retailers we link to though the program. You will see that we disclose any links that are affiliate links within the articles.