‘Gawker Stalker’ creates stir

You know it’s hard out there for a celebrity – even Geraldo’s not safe.

The popular blog Gawker.com has launched a new “Gawker Stalker” feature that pinpoints the locations of readers’ random celebrity sightings in Manhattan, using a Google map.

Gawker, which had been posting map-free “Stalker” sightings for two years, is now digging in its heels against famously protective celebrity publicists who complain that the cheeky feature places the rich and famous in harm’s way with just the click of a mouse.

“Not at all,” says the site’s editor, Jessica Coen. “Our spies are just regular people … people that are excited to see someone they like. Our readers are, for the most part, a very educated, well-meaning bunch.”

Coen has hired two interns to update the map daily with readers’ sightings, down to the exact time, restaurant and cross-streets.

Earlier this week, there were sightings of Nicole Richie (“petite and cute”), Naomi Campbell (“telling her assistant to hurry up”), Ashanti (“her perfume reeks”), Kenny Rogers (“looked exactly like he’s had a ridiculous amount of work done”) and Claire Danes, dining with her dad (“they were both really messy”).

Another’s impression of Geraldo Rivera, spotted at Rockefeller Center: “Shorter than expected (aren’t they all), his moustache definitely greased into place and so tan he looked like he just popped out of an Easy Bake Oven.”

That might merit a mean-spirited chuckle, but some folks aren’t laughing.

“This is a dangerous thing,” says publicist Stan Rosenfield, who represents George Clooney. “And for them to say that, if somebody gets hurt, ‘Don’t blame it on us because they’re public figures,’ it’s ridiculous.”

Rosenfield thinks the site is “taking advantage of the fact that there is probably no statute on the books at this time that governs this dissemination of information.”

The Gawker crew considers it much ado about nothing.

“It would be horrible and terrible and the end of Western civilization as we know it if someone were to take the Stalker sightings that have been on Gawker for years and start displaying them in graphical form!” the sardonic site said in a recent entry.

“What sort of evil Nazi deviants would do such a thing?”

Gawker’s Coen thinks the map is essentially harmless.

“We completely acknowledge that there are very many creepy people out there, but truth is, if there is someone really intending to do a celebrity harm, there are much better ways to go about doing that than looking at the Gawker Stalker,” she says.

“If you’re using the map to do that, you are a really bad stalker.”