Why Society Pages Dried Up

Michael Shaffer on the near-death of the local celebrity:

Once upon a time, residents of non-Hollywood cities
had lots of locally famous people to gawk at. There were hometown tycoons and
hometown heiresses and hometown department-store bosses, a local elite that
might not appear in movies but had a way of popping up in the society pages. In
the past few decades, though, local bankers have morphed into regional
vice-presidents of banking conglomerates and local industrialists have turned
into regional sales managers for diversified multinationals. With the decline of
local elites, the market for gossip globalized just as surely as the market for
IT support services.

- John C.L. Morgan