WordNet
n. a journalist who writes a column of gossip about celebrities
Wikipedia
A gossip columnist is someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine, especially a gossip magazine. Gossip columns are material written in a light, informal style, which relates the gossip columnist's opinions about the personal lives or conduct of celebrities from show business ( motion picture movie stars, theater, and television actors), politicians, professional sports stars, and other wealthy people or public figures. Some gossip columnists broadcast segments on radio and television.
The columns mix factual material on arrests, divorces, marriages and pregnancies, obtained from official records, with more speculative gossip stories, rumors, and innuendo about romantic relationships, affairs, and purported personal problems.
Gossip columnists have a reciprocal relationship with the celebrities whose private lives are splashed about in the gossip column's pages. While gossip columnists sometimes engage in (borderline) defamatory conduct, spreading innuendo about alleged immoral or illegal conduct that can injure celebrities' reputations, they also are an important part of the "Star System" publicity machine that turns movie actors and musicians into celebrities and superstars that are the objects of the public's obsessive attention and interest. The publicity agents of celebrities often provide or "leak" information or rumors to gossip columnists to publicize the celebrity or their projects, or to counteract "bad press" that has recently surfaced about their conduct.
Usage examples of "gossip columnist".
A New York Post gossip columnist suggested Brock had apologized because he was having an affair with Hillary Clinton's former press secretary, which he wasn't.
The hen-ess, the writer, the gossip columnist, and the tourist in SoHo.
I'd almost reached the editor's cubicle, when the paper's gossip columnist pushed his chair back to block my way.
Carlsen should have remembered that no gossip columnist was ever without one.
Paul waited until Nicholas had finished talking to yet another gossip columnist and then approached sharply.
So, last autumn, they launched themselves on their very amateurish and feeble campaign against my son, first via that gossip columnist whose name I forget, then via your newspaper and you.
A French gossip columnist had accused Teri of spending a weekend on the yacht of a famous Greek shipping magnate to whom she was engaged, and sleeping with his three brothers while the ship's owner flew to Rome for a day on business.