Searching for speed

But on the sunnier side, the panelists said that the great increase in the speed at which information travels might be one of the biggest beneficial changes of the digital age.

"The good news about today is that we know really quick if someone likes something or not, so we can decide when to push or whether to pull it back," Walk said of the instant marketing opportunities the Web affords. "I'm really excited about the immediacy of the digital revolution."

For an operation such as TMZ, specializing in breaking unvarnished celebrity news, the Web is really the only way it could work, said Gillian Sheldon, the site's supervising producer.

Sheldon came up through television, working at several news channels in Seattle and then the show Celebrity Justice, but said the phenomenon of real-time celebrity news would not be possible without the Web.

"Waiting for the television cycle now would have killed us for the stories that we were getting and breaking," Sheldon said. "If someone gets arrested, it's not going to hold."

But speed alone is not enough to sell the content. Irrespective of where TMZ sits on the moral radar, its stories are fact-checked and accuracy still matters, said Mark Golin, editor of People.com.

"Along with the speed, people still want it to be true," he said. Every few days a new entertainment news site appears, but to Golin, that doesn't mean that the entry barriers to People's business are lowering.

In focus groups that People conducts, he said that "one of the strongest benefits that comes out is, 'If I hear it on People, I know it's true.'" That brand quality is not something that an independent blogger or a small site can replicate, Golin said.

In response to a question about the threat from the big celebrity blog site Gawker, Golin was dismissive. He said he enjoyed reading the site, but that Gawker and People are not really competing on the same level.

People.com's core value is its brand, he said, pointing out that with 830 million monthly page views, it remains "fantastically profitable."

Affirming nods from the other panelists suggested that yes, the big boys still play in a league of their own.