Backgrounder: Rush & Malloy
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Psst, did you hear the latest about Michael Jackson and Bubbles, the famous chimpanzee?
Well, George Rush and Joanna Molloy know about it. In fact, you probably learned about it from them, if not through the endless water-cooler conversations their popular gossip column sparks.
Rush and Molloy are one of the biggest gossip column duos in the nation. The married couple dishes the dirt on celebrities five times a week in The Daily News and across the nation through their syndicated column in Tribune Media Publications. Rush and Molloy have been gossiping professionally for 19 and 17 years, respectively.
Rush was raised in a small Midwestern town outside Chicago. He studied at Brown University and received his master's degree in journalism at Columbia University. He contributed to a number of publications, including Esquire, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair before finding his stride as a gossip columnist in New York dailies.
Rush also co-authored a book with Marty Venker, titled Confessions of a Secret Service Agent. First published by Penguin Books in 1988, the anecdotal account of Venker's position as a Secret Service agent from 1971 to 1981 chronicles his experiences guarding Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Regan.
"Gossip hasn't changed since I started doing it," she said. "People love to hear stories and, thank God, tell them. That is eternal."
Molloy is a Bronx-born, fifth-generation New Yorker with a strong Irish-American heritage. She is reputed for a tough interview style that she honed while covering the gossip beat at New York magazine's Intelligencer and then in the Page Six column at The New York Post.
Rush and Molloy first reported rumors together at The New York Post on the Page Six column, where they fed New York City its daily dish of scandal.
The couple married in 1992 and moved their careers the following year to the pages of The Daily News. Rush continued reporting on famous people's foibles when he headed up the newspaper's gossip column. Molloy shifted gears and began covering local news events for the publication's graveyard shift. Moving on from stories that predominantly dealt with murders and fires, Molloy rejoined her husband to cover the salacious celebrity events beat. Rush and Molloy have co-authored the column since then.
The two reporters are leaders in the gossip column industry. They have scored scoops on numerous celebrity stories and have broken many major stories, including how Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times journalist, got his hands on the "secret contract" the Kennedy family supposedly made with Marilyn Monroe.
Some of their recent columns have explored the rumors about Michael Jackson's unsavory actions with Bubbles the chimpanzee, the possible rekindling love affair between Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz and Michael Lohan's threats of legal action against his wife unless she agreed to have Lindsay on a reality TV show.
The gossip industry has changed drastically in the last decade. Venues for gossip have proliferated significantly with the rise of television shows like Entertainment Tonight, magazines like US Weekly and Web sites like Gawker. But the essence of gossip remains the same, Molloy told Razor magazine.
"Gossip hasn't changed since I started doing it," she said. "People love to hear stories and, thank God, tell them. That is eternal."
Rush and Molloy will speak about their work at a noon lecture on March 9 at New York University.