The 3AM Girls will have a tricky time spinning this out into a full page

popbitch shuts for a springclean.

Bitch does Vicar

Internet now collapsing in on itself, say observers

But we still have a lot of respect and love for you all

Popbitch: popbitch 'a bit crap this week' - and we did love the Robert Maxwell and Lord Jenkins stories. Maybe a fat, dead former Socialist special is in the offing?

Popbitch Twang

Odd to see Popbitch running the WENN claim that Courtney threw herself onto Strummer's coffin - a splendid image, yes, but why feature a story that's already been run on local radio celeb news features and routinely rubbished?

And the Diana Ross fails police drunk test "news" has already been picked clean.

If they carry on like this, Popbitch'll be lifting stories from the Daily Star by Easter.

Equally 'tail wagging the popdog' is the report that Sophie Raworth "has been told to get a Trinny and Susannah style makeover for her hair" - not only does everyone know that T&S don't go near anyone's barnet - the unsavoury business of hairdressing is left offscreen and unmentioned (you should have seen them wince when one of their subjects rubbished their dressing advice but said 'I like the hair'), but the trails for the new Six O'Clock news featuring Sophie's excellent new crop have been running for a day or so already.

It leaves the item on a par with the kid in your class who always felt the need to go "Haircut... Haaaairrrcut" when you'd been to Gus The Elderly Barbers the day before.

If a tree falls over in an empty wood, and nobody is watching it on a broadband link-up in Hoxton, couldn't we just say it's Michael Owen's sister?

popbitch returns. What have we done without it, eh? [reads from piece of paper handed to him] Oh... watched Life Laundry, apparently.

Meanwhile, watching the Google search terms as they still roll in for people looking for the "truth" about the Footballer shows the dangers of closing down the 'bitch. What used to be "what is it?" type searches have now started to mutate into searches based on the rumours that are skeetering round in the real world, which suggests that really, he'd have been better off leaving something obviously false up, instead of creating a climate where it's mutated into something else entirely. For example: it seems the word "sister" has disappeared in a lot of the retelling.

Normally we'd hold this back for pop papers, but...

Amanda Platell's piece on Popbitch needs to be dealt with right now, we think. For those of you who haven't been bothered by her rather tiresome existence, Platty was part of William Hague's crack team who helped him turn a Labour landslide into another Labour landslide through their rather useless Tory election campaign last time round.

Suddenly aware that she'd thrown her weight behind the biggest bunch of political weebles since Disraeli took a holiday and left his dog Footy in charge for a fortnight, she then flogged a snippy fly on the wall documentary to the telly going "Ha ha, look how rubbish the Tories are", in the vain hope we might forget that the most rubbish thing they did was hire her to do the press work for them.

Now she writes the sort of mediawatch column in the New Statesman which would embarrass a fourteen year old Livejournal writer for its lack of understanding and startling insight. Okay, we don't like her; you may have got that. Anyway, like a whale deciding to try some KFC instead of plankton, for a change she's writing about an internet issue; like that whale, she gets metaphorically stuck in the doorway and thrashes about a bit.

The cyber-gossip website Popbitch - it's proud motto 'Unfounded rumour peddled as truth' - has set the newspaper industry back years

Um... "proud motto"? actually, Amanda, that's a joke. You see? Popbitch doesn't actually pretend to be a news source, and doesn't take itself all that seriously. If you don't get that, you might be about to make yourself look a bit of a wally.

The industry has worked hard at self-regulation...

Really? By appointing a bunch of newspaper editors to pass judgement on other editors? That would account for the quality and restraint shown by the British press, then. It makes you wonder exactly how deep the shit dumped on the Diana butler would have been but for this admirable self-restraint. And have you seen The Sport, Amanda? Those pictures of Sara Cox with her tits out that the Sunday People sneaked through the bushes didn't actually exist, then?

... but the dilemma over whether to print what has now become known as the Beckham rumour, the very same that first appeared on Popbitch, has thrown the whole process badly off course

Amanda, sweetie, the rumour did appear on the messageboard at The Bitch, but not first - it actually appeared initially on a Manchester United message board. About ten seconds research would have told you that. But anyway, let's get back to the issue - surely if a newspaper is admirable and self-regulated, then there's no dilemma at all. "Do we print an obviously false story alledging misconduct by a celebrity?" I'm sorry, I can't see any dilemma there at all, even if you add "because someone said it on the internet." Every day, thousands of things are said about people on message boards all over the world, and yet somehow there's no great panic attack at editorial conferences as a result - does David Yelland really stride into Wapping and say "Lads, I've just seen on Usenet that Christina only fucks black guys and always takes it up the ass - do we run this?" Palpable nonsense. If the tabloids want to run gossip as fact, they will, but lets not shed any tears that the poor little things are worrying about self-regulation. "Curse the internet - we wouldn't be in this position if they'd never said anything. We could just get back to buying up stories from close friends of Princess Diana and the former Mrs. Barrymore and not need to worry about the pledges we signed about invasion of privacy."

The tabloids had a field day, either running the rumour - claiming it was utterly untrue - or running the story of the rumour without the details, which in many ways is worse

Well, on the later point we agree with you. We notice you - um - run the story of the rumour without the details, Amanda. Now, tell us, how is it Popbitch's fault that the tabloids are so lazy they get most of their stuff of the web these days? Have you heard the phrase "shooting the messenger", Amanda?

My phone rang constantly with people wanting to know the truth about the Beckhams.

How thrilling your life must be. Let's hope your friends don't ever get a computer with web access, or indeed half a life, that your phone may never be stilled.

One former newspaper executive shared with me his rather sinister speculations about the rumour. (I will spare you the details)

Yawn. It's not going to be forces at work in the country again, is it? While we're namedropping, my newsagent filmed a cameo for Hollyoaks this week. Don't we lead thrilling, thrilling lives, Amanda?

No newspaper would have run the story unless it had appeared on the website, so Popbitch has enabled some newspapers to get perilously close to breaking their own codes and others to succumb to their baser instincts

What on earth are you talking about? Do you realise how ridiculous you sound? "A big boy did it first, Mummy." Any newspaper that runs a story simply because it's on the internet really ought to think seriously about closing itself down; and since when did the british tabloids need the excuse of "it's on a website" to invade someone else's privacy? If the press can't contain themselves faced with a bit of nonesense on a usually unreliable website, the problem with self-regulation is shown clearly, but it's not Popbitch that's set them back years - it's the paper's editors, honey. You might as well try and blame Sara Cox for sunbathing topless, or Paul Burrell for getting arrested.

Although the laws of libel for the internet are the same as for newspapers, they are much more difficult to enforce

You don't really know this for certain, do you? In fact, as far as we can tell, it's a lot easier to enforce libel laws on the internet. You might have noticed, for example, that popbitch pulled all references to beckham - as they have earlier to leslie and clarkson - without any need for any solicitors to get themselves into a court room. References to the Beckham story disappeared as soon as they appeared. Whereas a libel, once its in a paper, sits there, unchangable in that edition.

Tracing the source of a mumour can be almost impossible...

I'm assuming, Amanda, you're aware that libel law applies to anyone repeating a libel, and so "tracing the source" isn't entirely neccesary, as you can bring action against the owner of the site where the libel is published rather than the person who posted the libel in the first place

... and, if found, there is little chance of them having the fund to fight a legal action.

Have I missed a major change in the defamation laws in this country? Is it now impossible to launch a legal action against someone on the grounds that they can't fund their defence? Or is Platell just typing words more or less at random?

Closing a website is a lot easier than closing a paper

Eh? It's not, you know. Rupert Murdoch closed Today by calling everyone in and saying "This is your last edition", didn't he? And, um, if its easy to close a website, doesn't that make it easy to enforce the laws of libel rather than "much more difficult"?

A few thousand pounds later, the culprits are up and smearing again in cyberspace with the same audience of 20 million people

A few thousand pounds? Amanda, is that how much you think it costs to establish a website? And surely the "culprits" would be, by then, under a court pledge not to repeat the libel, so they'd be in the same position as if a newspaper had reprinted a libel. (Of course, The Sun is just one paper who's abused the spirit of self-regulation to do just that - maybe running the "You're Still A Lying Trucker" story alongside the judgment of the regulators that the original "You Lying Trucker" story was Popbitch's fault too.) And to accuse - as you appear - Popbitch of running a smear campaign against David Beckham is just hysterical nonsense. As for the "audience of 20 Million", what is that figure? Where did it come from? Are you really suggesting the average website has a larger audience than Coronation Street?

We may just have witnessed the death of privacy

Let's hope there was a tabloid cameraman snuck into the hospital room to capture the moment - you know, like with Russell Harty and Gordon Kaye?

It is ironic that the website's founder, as revealed in the daily Mirror, is Neil Stevenson, editor of the Face magazine...

No, that's not ironic. Unless you're Alanis Morrisette. And "revealed" - how did the Mirror find out that deep dark secret? Reading The Face's press release when he was appointed? Looking at the news story on mediaguardian? We simply don't know.

... a publication that regularly features the stars Popbitch smears.

Again, "smears" is histrionic, and more importantly - have you read either the Face or Popbitch? Because for all the Face's taking of its eye off the ball, it doesn't feature former Spice Girls, footballers or pierced pop stars who make up Popbitch's stock-in-trade. Again, a spot of research before launching into print could help.

Talk of a celebrity boycott of the magazine comes as no surprise

And, to cap it all, after berating the press for running groundless, unsourced rumours, you end on one yourself. Hats off.

Popbitch update

Popbitch is now, apparently 'on holiday' - well, they probably need it after the board was - what was it? overwhelmed with visitors. Yes, overwhelmed, of course. That would be it.

Meanwhile, obviously less scared of legal action is the BNP, apparently, who still suggest that Dannii supports their special breed of stupid. We wonder what's happened to Dannii's threatened legal action against them?

Watching the Google detectives

After a flurry of searches on "David + Beckham + Popbitch" (and variations thereof), we're seeing a sudden surge in "Jeremy Clarkson Popbitch." We don't know, frankly.

In unrelated news:

"It's funny. I managed to sit through a whole episode of the new Channel 4 homo-drama, Queer as Folk, and at no point did I think, 'I'd like to try that.'"

Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times, reprinted in the Guardian, 15 March. Don't worry Jeremy, none of us fancy you either.

[From BiWatch].

So it's not that, then.

The Bitch done closed

Clearly, the current status of the popbitch message board is one of a site that has closed itself up rather than become "overwhelmed" -not so much too many people trying to post asa baord that has been swamped with people trying to look at it.

The whole episode has been kinda curious, though, don't you think? A few years back, tired of the excesses of the Sun, several millionaire stars clubbed together to form a group that would pounce on the paper as soon as there was a libel slipped through - it didn't take long before Elton John was maligned and the lottery-syndicate swung into action. Obviously, the humiliation of the paper didn't stop the tabs totally, but it did draw their teeth for a long while.

You have to wonder if the Michael Owen's Sister case is a similar exercise taking place in cyberspace. It's certainly curious the way the Daily Mail picked up on the tale so swiftly, and it's generated a lot of old media coverage - "we cannot say what those allegations were", as ILR put it; even giving Mark Lawson a chance to trot out the old, old lie that anyone who publishes anything on the internet is a credulous moron in the Guardian (shame on you, Lawson).

Of course, it could just be someone getting lawyer happy, but the speed and effort being taken to crush a story that was palpably bollocks in the first place is interesting.

But, David - if you're planning to use our "the editor system means that stories carried are implicitly endorsed by the website" line in court, could we have a huge refresher, please?

You have to wonder...

Is the current "Too many people are trying to look at us" page at the front of Popbitch because too many people are trying to look at the page, or an attempt to switch off the system before Michael Owen's lawyers turn up?

If it'll stop you asking

It's some lameass rumour about the footballer and another woman, other than the alleged singer. Nobody believes a word of it, and to be honest, we'd rather Popbitch just went "he's not shagging anyone else" rather than carrying a cryptic message which implies that there's some dark secret about David Beckham.

Let's pretend we're the NME

Since the Daily Star used to just fill their columns with stuff filched off Popbitch, and so that presumably will be the great new dirction taken at AOL Kings Reach Tower now, we're beating them to the chase.

Actually, we've just read on Pb that The Pretenders are covering Interferon's Get Out of London, which is something we can't wait to hear. Now all we need is for Garbage to do the Mobiles' Drowning in Berlin, and we can die happy. Not pretty, but happy.

What the pop papers say, part two: The 'not exactly express' edition

So, where were we? Before we get to the main business of the week, a couple of other pieces. First, is it really fair of NewMediaGuardian to snipe at the tabloids for filling their gossip columns with bits culled from Popbitch while, um, filling their diary with bits culled from Popbitch; even if the item was about the posts relating to the possibility that Popbitch might start charging. The question is: how much should one pay to read Hufty from The Word's anonymous words of wisdom?...

Popbitchers themselves were frothing with the news that PJ and Eibb have granted an interview to Sleaze Nation to say how Popbitch is rubbish now and they don't bother posting any more, not them, no. Yes, my friends, it's a style magazine doing an article about how a message board isn't as good as it used to be. Cutting edge...

Ministry of Sound trumpet a Callaghanesque "Crisis? What Crisis?"* - apparently, the loss of 11 staff, the departure of the Music Group CEO and the termination of several side-projects isn't a sign that the dance empire is crumbling, instead they tell Music Week "it's about concentrating on our strengths." The fact that Fischerspooner is part of a scene that's selling well in Germany apparently proves that they're not a squib at all, you know. Mind you, David Hassellhoff sells well in Germany, and he's yet to replicate the success anywhere else. Also from Music Week - you know how downloads are hurting sales? Album sales up twelve per cent compared with where they were at this point last year...

So, the nme finally made it. In a horrible, horrible orange bag that smells really, really awful, the cover proper has got Dave Grohl on it. But you wouldn't know because it's all about the CD, man.

And it is a great CD - Libertines, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beatings, Von Bondies, Ikara Colt, Radio 4, BRMC, The D4... really, even if this week's issue was rubbish, it's worth getting.

And the issue isn't bad, either. Hurrah!

News: "I've got a quote for the NME - fuck off." That Robbie Williams knows how to hurt, doesn't he?; Eminem's delighted to have won awards from MTV Europe. He showed his bottom to celebrate. There's that picture of Sophie Ellis Bextor holding the innards of a fox, and P Diddy wearing a fur coat - maybe it's bulletproof or something. Although presumably wasn't for the fox. Guns and Roses say the riot which happened when they didn't play wasn't down to them. Axl was apparently fully intending to play the gig in Vancouver, despite being in a plane above LA when the doors opened. Hmmm.; Pink has said she dreams of killing the president of Nigeria, because she suspects that his "promise" that the stoning to death of Amina Lawal won't happen is just some PR blather to try and keep Miss World in the country; Liam and Noel haven't spoken to each other for six weeks - this is awful, as at least when they're talking to each other they're not talking to us; the nme Cool List take 2 compiles reader's votes - Cobain; Gallagher N; Chris Martin; Eminem; Ms Dynamite; Coxon; Yorke; Rivers "do I sniff a write-in campaign?" Cuomo; PJ Harvey and Marilyn Manson - is it any surprise that the two genuinely cool people here are women-ladies?; filling out the news pages a little more with stuff that would once have been in angst, snippets of reactions to the publications of Kurt's Diary are used to add weight to the news that a bunch of schoolkids are trying to get the book recalled and pulped; Ryan Adams wants to work with Doves...

Hot New Bands: The Go - former consorts of Jack White; My Morning Jacket - Led Zep and Muppet inspired longhairs

Interpol do ten tracks for a fake CD type thing - Ladytron, Primal Scream, Duran Duran, Nick Cave...

There's also a picture of an indie boys cock, with requests for it to be claimed...

The D4 are aiming for 100 per cent rock, but "that would involve death."...

Dave Grohl is 33, and feels he's been doing rock too long - "I've been kinda waiting for it to bottom out... I feel like I've achieved things way beyond my expectations"...

Radio 4 - the band, not the station - have something to say about Fischerspooner - "They're taking early-80's punk and electronic music and demeaning it." Big yes...

And another big yes: Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Nick says the band is "one giant, throbbing shag." Mark Beaumont describes them as having fallen together. This is right...

reviews: albums: pulp - hits - "evolution - as alan partridge would put it - not revolution", 9
jay z - the blueprint 2 - "naz gets two death threats, but that's a spent battle", 8
sum 41 - does this look infected? - "they aint no Fugazi", 7
atari teenage riot - redfine the enemy - "German students phoninh long distance from a drum n bass night", 8

singles: sotw - lcd soundsystem - give it up - "high grade rock and roll"
otjers - bjork - its in our hands - "plots her career with the steely singlemindedness of a Tory MP during conference season"
Atomic Kitten - the last goodbye - "bring back Kerry"

live - pink - brixton - "all this should stink to high heaven. it doesn't, though because although pink will stop at nothing, there's a twist - she does it all on her own terms"
the apples in stereo - london E1 - "magnified cartoon psychedlia can make you do goofy things"
sugababes - kings cross scala - "the soap opera is in danger of drowning out the funk"...

and just as its looking so good, they blow it. The letters page now has a slot for pictures of fans sent through SMS Picture Messaging. We thought they were turning into Melody Maker, but we were wrong - they seem intent on being the new Number One...

* - yes, we *know* - Larry Lamb headline rather than Sunny Jim quote. Don't bother emailing.