The Associated Press plans to increase its celebrity and entertainment coverage, and is hiring an additional 21 employees to be spread across Los Angeles, New York, and London.

AP insists that the new venture, termed an entertainment vertical, is "not about gossip, unnamed sources and innuendo." Rather, given the high demand from customers and members for entertainment coverage, AP says it makes "good business sense," reports blogger Nikki Finke.

The entertainment vertical will be produced by a brand new AP entertainment group, helmed by recently appointed Director of Entertainment Content, Daniel Becker, who will be responsible for managing coverage across all platforms, as well as contributing towards development of new multimedia services.

According to an internal AP Q&A with Becker, AP chose to create a separate division in order to "fine tune its content offerings." Becker said the entertainment group's initial content will "focus on celebrities and be heavily image driven."

AP has already signed a deal to provide celebrity video for the website of American entertainment magazine People.

Rupert Murdoch, however, is going in the opposite direction with regards to entertainment coverage, pulling the plug effective immediately on News Corp.'s online gossip blog PageSix.com. 

The site, which had only been live since December, experienced its first 1 million page views in a day after breaking photos of the prostitute involved in the Elliot Spitzer scandal. Nonetheless Murdoch assessed that site was not making quick enough inroads into an already crowded market.

"Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers.

Sources: Deadline Hollywood Daily and Gawker both through I Want Media