"Excuse me," Princess Diana once said to George Rush '78 as he stood close behind her at a party, straining to overhear every word of her private conversation. "Could you move your ear?"
Rush said it wasn't the first time someone had asked him to mind his own business. As a syndicated gossip writer for the New York Daily News, the former semiotics concentrator spends his days - and nights - concentrating on the world's juiciest spats, divorces, romances and anything else that grabs the public's voyeuristic eye.
"It's sort of like a sandwich shop compared to a French restaurant," he said, comparing his brand of journalism to reporting hard news. "But people do like a good sandwich."
With that in mind, Rush and his wife, Joanna Molloy, stack their daily column with succulent gossip and a hint of irreverent humor. "Rush and Molloy" appears five days a week in about 30 newspapers worldwide and covers scandalous or otherwise attention-grabbing news from the realms of entertainment, politics and media.
"We sort of create a little newspaper every day that has something for everybody," Rush said. "People who normally wouldn't be that interested in Britney Spears might find something about Bill Clinton that will keep them talking."
As a kid growing up in the Chicago suburb Highland Park, Ill., Rush was not particularly interested in celebrity gossip, but he did admire legendary Chicago Sun-Times writer Irv Kupcinet's local gossip rag. At Brown, Rush wrote for Fresh Fruit, which was then The Herald's weekly alternative magazine, and spent a summer interning at the Providence Journal. Sold on the news business, he moved to Manhattan and got a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
After freelancing for magazines such as Esquire and Rolling Stone and writing news copy for a local New York TV station, Rush took a job reporting for the New York Post's famed Page Six gossip page.
"They were going to provide health insurance," he said.
While reporting for Page Six, Rush met his wife and co-columnist-to-be, fellow reporter Joanna Molloy.
After about five years, in 1993, the New York Daily News offered Rush his own column, and the following year the paper's editor "thought it would be a cute idea" if Molloy joined him.
Since then, "Rush and Molloy" has been an enormous success. Last television season, the couple featured prominently in Bravo's documentary series "Tabloid Wars," which chronicled the lives of New York Daily News reporters.
In addition to appearing in newspapers throughout the United States, Canada and New Zealand, the column is often quoted in the Internet's most widely read blogs. The Drudge Report has a permanent link to Rush and Molloy's Daily News page.
But as a young reporter planning a career in news, Rush hardly thought his beat would one day include Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie.
"Certainly thoughts have crossed my mind, like 'How did I end up here?' " he said. "But I'm not really bothered by it."
He said his job is immensely gratifying because he knows ordinary people, as well as other media outlets, read his writing.
"You take the subway to work and you see people checking out what you've been working on the day before, and you kind of feel like you've become a part of the routine of New York," he said. "Entertaining people is not such a bad thing, I've come to think."
Over the years, Rush said, many reporters who have graduated from Ivy League schools have contributed to his column. "I suppose it's a comment on the sad decline of our civilization that I should end up with so many Yale graduates at my beck and call," he joked. "But it does give you a kind of satisfaction, in going to Brown, that Yalies want to work for you."
In deciding what to print, Rush said he and his wife usually get confirmation from at least two sources before publishing anything. The pair also maintains certain standards of privacy for their subjects, such as trying to keep celebrities' children out of the spotlight.
"The kids didn't seek out the fame," Rush said. He and Molloy also avoid printing people's home addresses.
"We try to be tough on people, but not gratuitously mean," Rush said.
When it comes to appropriateness of content, lurid sex stories are out. The two print only what they would be comfortable describing to their eight-year-old son, Eamon. But "he's growing up pretty fast, I think, being around us," Rush joked.
The couple's typical day begins in the office around 9:30 or 10 a.m. They pore over the day's news and decide which stories to pursue. They then work the phones, talking to sources, and submit their column by 6 p.m.
After deadline, Rush and Molloy hit the town. They dig for material at Manhattan's hottest events, from club parties to film premieres, book receptions, art openings and other star-studded affairs.
As consummate observers of Manhattan's social elite, Rush said he and Molloy appreciate their comparatively low profiles.
"Writing about celebrities has made us cherish what anonymity we have," he said. "Particularly at a party, when you're trying to slink around undetected as you eavesdrop."
