Advertisement Early on in my career I learnt that for many, ahem, supposedly serious newspaper journalists, the term âgossipâ is something of a dirty word. And yet just about every cracking scoop â from politics to football â usually starts with loose lips spilling the beans on something salacious and newsworthy that someone, somewhere is trying to hide. Gossip fodder: James Packer and his first fiancee, the former model Kate Fischer, were together for five years. Credit:Vince Caligiuri And gossips, along with whistleblowers, snitches, moles, insiders, âwell-placed sourcesâ or whatever else you want to call them, have played a critical role in how thousands of stories have made it onto