Less than five years ago Geelong’s Dylan Howard was jobless after falling foul of the AFL as an ambitious television news reporter. Now, as NOEL MURPHY discovers, he’s one of the leaders of America’s online celebrity news industry, entertaining tens of millions of followers with insider tales of the rich and famous.
WHAT is it about Aussies and Hollywood?
Pearce, Crowe, Kidman, Watts, Jackman, Ledger, Bana, Blanchett, Rush, Gibson, Mendelsohn -Tinsel Town just can’t get enough of them.
Right now yet another Aussie is at the top of the celebrity tree – a Geelong lad, no less.
Dylan Howard might be on the other side of the lens but, as editor-in-chief of monster US celebrity/entertainment website Celebuzz, he’s squarely in the spotlight, too.
But that’s nothing new.
Whether it’s scooping the world with Charlie Sheen and his urine samples or Justin Beiber’s scraps with paparazzi, he’s no stranger to the limelight.
He’s appeared on national news and entertainment programs across America and the UK and had work published everywhere from Woman’s Day to OK!
As one of America’s foremost investigative entertainment journalists, he presides over one of the biggest celebrity gossip media outlets in the US. His tens of millions of visitors each month outstrip even the biggest newsstand entertainment magazines.
It’s a long way from Western Heights College and Channel 31, where he first cut his teeth in TV.
It’s even further from his boycotting by the AFL and its footballers for reporting on Seven News alleged drug use among senior Hawthorn players.
Excessive in light of recent AFL drug-use allegations, the boycott effectively killed his then-skyrocketing career in Australian television.
Unsurprisingly, Dylan feels vindicated in his phoenix-like resurgence to a peak post in the world of new media.
But he doesn’t gloat, remembering the painful fallout his family endured during his 2008 media storm.
Many considered him a sacrificial lamb to the altar of football expediency.
After all, the newsroom reality is that reporters don’t put stories to air – that’s the responsibility of their seniors and editors.
“A lot of people do forget the amount of people involved in the sign-off of a story,” Howard tells GC from his base in Los Angeles.
“It’s not like any reporter can just go on air without being vetted by senior management. Now I’m on that side and I can tell you nothing gets through without me or senior staff giving the sign-off.”
Dylan’s tenacity overwhelmed in Australia but appealed in the US, shooting him through the ranks like a rocket-propelled grenade.
His coverage of the massive Charlie Sheen “tiger blood” scandal made him a household name.
“Charlie Sheen was probably the thing that’s punctuated my career most. I’d never been involved in a story like that before,” Dylan says.
“I remember vividly sitting in his mansion with helicopters chattering above. He and I were in the bathroom as he had a haircut.
“He’d become this disgraced darling of Hollywood and somehow I found myself in his bathroom as a person he trusted to get out his message to the world. You had to pinch yourself.
“I was sitting on the couch with a bunch of his friends when he went to the bathroom then called out to me. Next he pees in a water bottle in front of me and gives it to me and says, ‘Test this’.’’
Dylan’s exclusive video interview with Sheen streamed around the world, becoming a global sensation.
Sheen is now just one of Dylan’s many celebrity encounters.
He recounts a furious Lindsay Lohan phoning him to accuse his reporters of getting stories wrong.
“She was wrong,” he says.
A pig wearing a bow and painted toenails rushed him in the dining room of Paris Hilton’s Mulholland Drive home.
He’s covered everyone from Britney Spears and the Kardashians to Snooki and Holly Madison.
A cursory glance at the Celebuzz website reveals further glitz: Gaga, Ke$ha, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Bieber, Hemsworth, Timberlake and hundreds more.
“We publish 50 to 60 content pieces a day and 15 videos a day – we’re a fully-fledged multimedia operation,” Dylan says.
“As editor, I’m buying photographs, building relationships with various publicists, chasing sources and stories.
“There’s still this perception that all celebrity media are like paparazzi but I’ve eliminated the word gossip in the pursuit of legitimate celebrity stories.”
This is Celebuzz’s point of difference in an extraordinarily competitive field where Dylan says traditional journalism has morphed into a new brand of contextual, in-depth, authoritative reporting geared specifically for online.
“We’re a brand without borders; on desktop, Twitter, Facebook,” he observers.
“Publishers these days need to look to social media for 30 to 50 per cent of their total traffic, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. They have to face up to looking at how you tell a story online; whether it’s through live chat, through a photo narrative, through a gallery, maybe a countdown of a top 10.
“Digital story-telling is not the old who, what, when and where. We’ve disrupted the way celebrity is put out there.
“Sure, we can titillate, be provocative, but at the same time we can give it a little seriousness.
“People are still out there chasing cooperation from celebrities every day but we had, for instance, Gerard Butler in our studio last week.
“Celebrities are recognising us as a reputable and authoritative media outlet.”
Dylan spends his time between Celebuzz offices on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard and New York’s Fifth Avenue.
His reputation in the US is enormous.
In November LA Press Club’s National Entertainment Journalism Awards named him investigative journalist of the year for his story on Leonardo DiCaprio, Toby Maguire, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and other Hollywood heavyweights gambling away millions of dollars in underground poker games.
He’s at the coal-face of media and entertainment, production but it’s still the thrill of the chase that presses his buttons.
“I remember my old editor, Peter Judd, saying you can never replicate the feeling you create when you break a story,” Dylan remembers.
“I think the day any journo worth their salt loses interest in chasing stories is the day they should hand in their notebook.”
