Hoping to learn more about Trump in those days, and what it is that makes him so much more successful than other publicity hounds at strategically generating press coverage, I wrote Benza, who agreed to an interview by email. In addition to his television gig, his memoir, 74 and Sunny, was published in 2015, and he’s the executive producer on the upcoming adaptation of “So B. It.” which debuts at this year’s L.A. Film Festival. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.

Conor Friedersdorf: How did you get into the gossip-item business?

A.J. Benza: I had been writing sports for Long Island Newsday for a few years. After my divorce in 1991, I started heading into Manhattan and hitting any nightclub that would let me in. Once I made friends with a few doormen I was able to go almost anywhere. One night, I was pissed off at a curb because I couldn't get into Vogue magazine's 100th birthday party. Mickey Rourke took pity on me, threw me into his Lincoln and took me to a little spot downtown called Rex.

Within two hours every supermodel you've ever seen walked into Rex and plopped right down next to Mickey … and me. What I saw that night … drugs, sex, etc., blew me away. I called Linda Stasi, who was editing the “Inside New York” gossip page for NY Newsday, and gave her a few tidbits. Soon she got me hired at NY Newsday running around to parties for her. A few months later, Mort Zuckerman bought the Daily News and wanted Linda. Linda brought me along. Suddenly I had a good salary, a big office, and an invitation to get past any rope I wanted. A year later Linda wanted out of gossip, so Mort let me write and edit the page, “Hot Copy.” Eventually I added “Downtown,” a Sunday column all about me and my exploits.

Friedersdorf: It’s hard for people who grew up on TMZ and Twitter to conceive of what that corner of the media world was like back then. How did celebrity gossip work?

Benza: Nothing felt as good as when I was able to take a pebble of a rumor, report it out, and source it, then check and re-check it nine ways to Sunday. But the reality is, the gossip game was largely played on the barter system. To fill a blank page everyday for a city as high strung as New York, you can become somewhat dependent on publicists and managers and agents calling you and dropping a dime on someone so long as you were able to squeeze something in the column that helped them.

Having a PR flack sell out an A-List client's extra-marital affair wasn’t odd at all, so long as I was able or willing to get one of their smaller, but vital, clients in the column. And God help them if I had a bit of dirt on one of their clients. Then the real negotiations began: “What are you gonna give me so that I bury this story and no one ever sees it?” Unlike TMZ or Radar and much of the celebrity magazines, we never paid a single dime for any information. It was forbidden. But the column really came to light whenever a top celebrity or politician or developer called me directly. If you play those calls correctly, you’ll have a pocketful of favors. But the biggest difference in gossip, then vs. now, is we were more hung up on getting things right. Not so much getting things first. Always trying to be first, especially nowadays with the speed of social media, can get a lot of people in trouble. More “writers” all chasing less interesting content usually amounts to a lot of crappy stories.