Coleen has described herself as a journalist on the wedding banns posted at Crewe Registry Office. The claim is based on the fact that she writes a column in Closer magazine. Obviously the real journos don't like it, but personally I've heard the same claim made much more tenuously. Usually from bright people who made an unwise degree choice and now write advertorials for lifestyle magazines. How many doorsteps has she been on? asks Roy Greenslade of the Guardian, in much the same tone I used to imagine myself asking fellow magazine copy writers "How many war zones have you been in?"

The fact is, as Roy says, celebrity is what gets you the plum writing jobs these days. But perhaps not that much has changed. The media has always been about who you know rather than what you can do, and now that everyone feels they know celebrities in intense personal detail perhaps it's inevitable that they end up getting the best gigs. Add to the fact that, of course, we always want to know more.

But is it journalism? Well, it's not Kate Adie, is it. But I suppose this is the world we live in. The original hacks still exist and still doorstep MPs and still enjoy their by-lines; the younger generation take whatever work they can for the skills they have. Which, at the moment, often means writing "vapid prose" for one of the five million celebrity magazines that are launched every day. We're all looking for 15 minutes of fame, in our own way, it's just that some of us are happy enough on the other side of the fence. Perhaps Coleen's only crime is trying to be on both sides of the fence at once.

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