Famous for reporting scandals about Paris Hilton and Michael Richards, TMZ.com is facing some gossip of its own. And it can be summed up like this: TMZ is in turmoil.

Publicly, you may have read the site's general manager, Alan Citron, just jumped ship to Buzznet, the music-based social network site that also runs Celebuzz, its celebrity and pop culture spin-off. (Citron and Buzznet's founder, Tyler Goldman, are friendly from their days at Movielink.) And Gillian Sheldon, TMZ's supervising producer and unofficial No.2 to chief Harvey Levin, who has been with the site since launch, has also left, for another Telepictures unit.

Are these two high profile departures pure coincidence? Time Warner would like you to think so. But you're smarter than that.

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Balthazar snob and blog publisher Nick Denton is unloading a trio of his websites. Music blog Idolator, which never gained much traction, is being unloaded to Buzznet, the music-focused social network that insisted it wasn't raising capital to buy blogs. City guide Gridskipper goes to old pal Lockhart Steele's Curbed network of hyper-local sites. And political muckraker Wonkette is going its lonely way, with managing editor Ken Layne taking the reigns solo. Not that it'll impact the business much: As Denton himself writes, those blogs represent just 3 percent of his pageview dump. Full memo from HQ below.

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