The venue: NYU School of Journalism.  The hosts: The Atlantic and the NYU Graduate School of Journalism.  The attendees: Intellectuals and members of the press.  The mood: Roundtable-y.  The topic: Is Britney Spears crazy?

The panel piggy-backed on the April 2008 Atlantic cover featuring Britney Spears surrounded by photographers for a feature article titled “The Britney Show.”  Though there was some high-minded discussion about the reasons Americans love celebrity gossip (as a replacement for fiction, to connect at the workplace and in other social situations, the morality of the paparazzi, Celebrities, They’re Just Like Us, etc), the conversation often de-evolved into one of the following things:

- “Britney is crazy…”

- “I love that show!”

I heard grumblings in the elevators on the way out that it wasn’t intellectual enough, that they expected something different from The Atlantic.

I disagree.  The rise of celebrity “news” is clearly an important trend in 21st century American society, and though it might be depressing to consider that people are more interested in the minutia of the lives of people they will never meet instead of fiction and what was once known as culture, it is the current state of affairs.  Some of the panelists reveled in this fact (Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times Magazine and Francois and Brandy Navarre of X17 and X17online).  Others seemed less enthusiastic personally, though not professionally (Bonnie Fuller of American Media and Richard Johnson of The New York Post’s Page Six [and "king of New York", according to Samuels]).  I did get the impression from Johnson, however, that he had personal misgivings about the direction of American interests despite his role (small in comparison to Fuller and X17) in setting that course.  If you were there, and you disagree, please set me straight.  There will be a video of the session on Atlantic Online.

Either way, it all depressed me.   Highlights and a couple more shots after the jump.

- To start off, the moderator, David Samuels, who wrote the article for the magazine said, “People have asked me, ‘you’ve done pieces on Gaza, why would you want to write about Britney Spears?’  Have you seen Gaza?  I don’t want to go back there.”

- Discussion Point: Celebrities and their lives are the lowest common denominator for many women in the workplace — something for them to discuss when they have little else in common, the 21st century equivalent of a serial novel in a newspaper.

- Heffernan compared gossip site editors and commenters scrutinizing shots of Britney’s cellulite with people scrutinizing pictures of 9/11 — planes hitting towers — for clues.

- Francois explained that the paparazzi can be a way for celebrities to control their exposure in the media.  People have in some ways appropriated that control: “People want to see everything,” he said.  “I tell my guys, ‘Shoot the backs of the stars, too — people don’t just want to see the front.’”

- Discussion point: Are magazines like Star and People and sites like X17online and Perez Hilton feeding this discourse to the public, or is the public demanding it — or some hybrid of the two.  This question of huge importance was asked but glossed over.

- Discussion point: Technology such as cameras, the internet, and the development of social media has turned what were traditionally non-stories (”Britney Goes to Rite Aid!”) into stories that are told.

- The next big picture for magazine editors, according to Fuller, is the picture of the Brad & Angelina twins, adding that they might go for as much as $7-8 million.

- Johnson was asked what Page Six’s dream picture would be: “Hillary Clinton making out with Tom Cruise.”

- Why is this news?  Virginia: “This isn’t replacing news; it’s replacing fiction.”

- At this point, I decided to do my own impression of paparazzi and broke out my little digi and snapped some shots.  It was quickly found to be annoying despite its nearly silent snapping by members of the audience — including Justin Smith — some of whom turned toward me politely.  There’s something unseemly about taking pictures in certain situations.

- Francois claimed that the public consciousness is concerned with Britney because “the world is more peaceful now, so people have time to pay attention to this.”

- As for the challenge of online gossip sites to the traditional magazine competitors, Fuller thinks (wishfully?  She claims her newsstand numbers are up this year…) that “online coverage encourages people to go to the magazines.”

Enjoy the pap photos, kiddos.