He: "She always said, 'I made you what you are today.' It was too much for me."
She: "I want him to face up to what he did to me, as a man and as a responsible member of society."
What makes the blind item and "he-said-she-said" the sine qua non of gossip columns is the same thing that makes them unacceptable to so-called legitimate journalists. Gossip is hearsay; its deniability, at least in the beginning, is essential to its appeal. Knowing something isn't as fun as speculating about it, so when the "he-said-she-said" takes place in front of the camera rather than behind it, it undermines the titillation factor.