Editor of The Sun’s Bizarre showbiz pages Gordon Smart was this week named the number one showbiz journalist in the UK by Press Gazette magazine.
Smart was voted number one in a survey of journalists and the public to find the UK’s top 50 showbiz journalists.
The 30-year-old has been editor of the Sun showbiz pages since 2007. Still only 30, he started out in journalism at the age of 18 on the Dundee Evening Courier before going to university, becoming a successful nightclub promoter and then working for the News of the World and then The Sun.
Recent scoops for Smart have included breaking the news that Madonna and Guy Ritchie were to divorce in 2008, revealing in March this year that Take That singer Mark Owen had ten extra-marital affairs and revealing comic Jason Manford’s Twitter sex antics in October.
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He told Press Gazette: ‘I’ve felt as much like a marriage counsellor as a journalist over the last few years.”
But he insisted that his brand of showbiz journalism is a lot more sensitive than that of a previous Sun era: “I feel like I’ve become the respectable face of showbiz journalism. That’s something I’m trying to do.”
Also featuring in the top ten are Daily Mirror 3am editor Clemmie Moodie and British Press Awards winners Caitlin Moran of The Times and Dan Wootton of the News of the World.
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Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan made it on to the top ten, mainly through the public vote. And anonymous online journalist Mr Holy Moly showed he has garnered the respect of the professionals by making it on to seventh place on the Press Gazette list.
Press Gazette also carried out a survey of 1,000 members of the public with the help of iCD research which found that the Daily Mail/Mail Online is their favourite place to find showbiz news followed by The Sun/Sun Online and then the BBC.
The full top 50 plus a longer interview with Gordon Smart appear in the December edition of Press Gazette magazine.
- 2. Clemmie Moodie – Daily Mirror, 3am editor
- 3. Mark Jefferies – Daily Mirror deputy TV editor
- 4. Caitlin Moran – The Times, columnist and interviewer
- 5. Dan Wootton – News of the World, showbiz editor
- 6. Piers Morgan – CNN chief interviewer
- 7. Mr Holy Moly- Holy Moly
- 8. Louise Gannon – News of the World Fabulous and freelance
- 9. Isabel Mohan, editor of 3am.com
- 10. Christian Guiltenane – assistant editor of OK! magazine
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