Harvey Levin, TMZ’s founder, leaving an L.A. gym. TMZ resembles an intelligence agency as much as a news organization. Photograph by Peter Bohler for The New Yorker

In the early-morning hours of February 15, 2014, Ray Rice and his fiancée, Janay Palmer, stepped into an elevator at the Revel hotel and casino, in Atlantic City. Palmer and Rice, a running back for the Baltimore Ravens, were arguing as the doors slid shut. When the elevator arrived in the lobby, Palmer was lying unconscious, face down, on the floor.

According to a former security supervisor at the Revel, nearly eighteen hundred cameras streamed video to a pair of monitoring rooms on the mezzanine floor. After guards responded to the incident in the lobby, several surveillance officers gathered and wondered aloud if a tape of Rice and Palmer could be sold to TMZ—the Web site that, since its inception, in 2005, has taken a merciless approach to celebrity news.

At around 4:30 a.m., one of the surveillance officers, sitting at a monitoring-room computer, reviewed footage from a camera that faced the elevator and, using a cell phone, surreptitiously recorded the screen. The officer then called TMZ.

It was the middle of the night in Los Angeles, where TMZ is based, so a message was left on the tip line. More than a hundred tips arrive every day. On September 29, 2015, an internal e-mail summarizing tips from the previous night referred to “info regarding George Clooney’s wedding,” “a video of a pro athlete getting attacked by a goat,” and “pictures of Meek Mill being incarcerated.” (The e-mail is one of many that were leaked to The New Yorker.) The tip line also recorded a claim that a major pop star “wears a fake booty in her music videos” and employs a “person who makes the fake butts.”

Many tipsters ask to be paid, and the site often complies. In October, 2014, TMZ received an e-mail that, under the subject heading “Drake at Stadium Club in D.C.,” announced, “I have the original footage. Please call me for price.” Fifty-nine minutes after a producer forwarded the tip to colleagues, TMZ posted a clip showing the rapper accidentally dropping thousands of dollars outside a Washington strip club. (In a message to a TMZ staff member, the source asked to be paid five thousand dollars.) Russ Weakland, a former TMZ producer, told me that he sometimes negotiated payments with tipsters who were anxious about releasing sensitive information. In 2009, for example, he took the call that led to TMZ’s breaking the news that Chris Brown had physically assaulted Rihanna. (The site subsequently published a police photograph of Rihanna’s battered face.) Weakland told me that his attempts to persuade sources to follow through with a leak often resembled a therapy session. “I’d have to talk people off cliffs,” Weakland said. “I’d tell them, ‘We’re not going to reveal our sources, because we want you to be a source for us again. We want you to trust us.’ ”

On February 19th, four days after the incident at the Revel, TMZ posted a fuzzy clip of Rice dragging Palmer’s limp body from the elevator. (According to a former TMZ photographer, the site paid fifteen thousand dollars. TMZ would not discuss payments, or other internal matters, but called this figure overblown.) The video, which went viral, had the phrase “TMZ SPORTS” embossed in the center—a branding practice known as “bugging.”

Investigators at the Revel, trying to discover who had taken the video, ascertained its timing by scrutinizing the clip’s audio track; while the phone was recording the footage, a general request for chips to be refilled could be heard on the casino intercom. The former security supervisor told me that casino officials also identified which computer had been used to review the footage. But Loretta Pickus, the former general counsel at the casino, told me that it could not be determined with certainty which employee had recorded the footage with a phone.

When the video was posted on TMZ, Rice’s attorney issued a statement, warning viewers not to make judgments until “all of the facts” emerged, adding, “Neither Ray nor myself will try this case in the media.” Three months later, Rice and Palmer held a press conference. Rice expressed regret, saying, “Me and Janay wish we could take back thirty seconds of our life.” What happened during those thirty seconds? Rice, the Ravens, and the N.F.L. did not seem especially determined to find out. The league suspended Rice for two games, but by early September he was preparing to return to play. Then, on September 8th, TMZ published a second surveillance video from the Revel. This one, bought for almost ninety thousand dollars, revealed what occurred inside the elevator: after the doors shut, Rice punched Palmer on the left side of her head.

The clip pitched the N.F.L. into a crisis. TMZ, the Times declared, “has the league on the run.” Roger Goodell, the N.F.L.’s commissioner, ducked questions about why its own investigators had not obtained the footage, and said, “We don’t seek to get that information from sources that are not credible.” But the video was unimpeachable, and its impact was immediate. Rice was cut by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the N.F.L. Sportswriters declared that TMZ had shaken the league “to its foundation.”

“Several complaints that the meatballs are gritty.” Facebook

Twitter

Email

Shopping

Six days later, Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, appeared on the Fox News program “Media Buzz” to discuss the Rice story. Levin is sixty-five. He has a jittery manner, a wide smile, and a deep tan. For the TV appearance, he was wearing a tight black T-shirt, which showed off his physique—he works out every weekday before dawn, prior to going to the office. Several of Levin’s colleagues told me that he is determined to maintain his youth. Gillian Sheldon, TMZ’s first publicist, who later became a supervising producer, said, “Once, Sumner Redstone”—the former executive chairman of Viacom, who is ninety-two—“told him that one of the secrets of his longevity was that he ate blueberries every day. So then, for months, Harvey was, like, ‘Blueberries!’ all the time.”

Howard Kurtz, the host of “Media Buzz,” reminded his audience that TMZ had published memorable scoops, such as posting police records, in 2006, that exposed Mel Gibson’s drunk-driving arrest and anti-Semitic rant. Later that year, the site released video footage of Michael Richards making racist comments during a comedy-club routine. In 2009, TMZ broke the news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death, and two years ago it revealed a recorded phone call between Donald Sterling, then the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and his mistress, in which Sterling urged her not to bring her African-American friends, including Magic Johnson, to Clippers games.

“How does TMZ get this stuff?” Kurtz asked.

“It’s so funny to me that people ask that question,” Levin replied. “We’re a news operation. I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Indeed, the site has built a deep network of sources, including entertainment lawyers, reality-television stars, adult-film brokers, and court officials, allowing Levin to knock down the walls that guard celebrity life. (He declined repeated requests for an interview.) TMZ has paid at least one mole inside B.L.S., a limousine service, to provide lists of celebrity customers, their planned routes, and the license-plate numbers of their vehicles. (In a 2015 e-mail, a TMZ employee asked colleagues if anyone had yet established a source at Uber.) Justin Kaplan, a former production associate at TMZ, recalls meeting a B.L.S. source—“a Hispanic gentleman”—at a gas station in Van Nuys, handing over an envelope filled with cash, and receiving in return a client list. The process had been so well honed, Kaplan told me, that “we barely said a word to each other.”