Anna Nicole BELOW THE FOLD in hometown paper

golddiggers are people, too.

for a golddigger, she was a fine person.

 

Bottom line, there must be a lot going on in Mexia.

 

But it's not "not news" because you declare her a vapid waste of space. No matter how much I agree with the assessment. If people care, people care. If I was running news desk that night, I'd make jokes about her titties and her drug use and laugh at how fawning and over-the-top the TV coverage of this reality-show poster child is. Then I'd put the fucker on A1 above the fold, because if I want people to read my paper, I want them to find the stuff they think is important. Even if I don't agree.

 

Do people care? Or do those in the celebrity-addicted press think they care?

I don't know how many people I've heard in the airport today say what an over-reaction it was for the national media to treat her death like she was a national statesmen. We're embarassing ourselves with this hypish bullshit.

 

That's a classic chicken v. egg issue. Honestly, I don't know how much of the national attention for Anna Nicole is organic and how much of it is manufactured by the celebrity press. Further complicating the issue is how, eventually, some stories that get shoved down our throats by said celebrity press end up becoming mainstream, even though we suspect the genesis is bullshit (JonBenet Ramsey comes to mind).

Of course, there's almost no way to measure reader interest in a story ahead of time, unless you do polls before the 4 p.m. meeting. You sort of have to trust the wire budgets in that case, and if they're leading with Anna Nicole, then obviously they think it's a big deal.

That's the nice thing about newspapers. If I don't think the Anna Nicole story is worth my time, one flip of the wrist solves everything.

 

A. As mentioned, I question whether this story fits the Page A1 standard of our readers expectations.

B. Quality-control starts somewhere. This story might be the standard people expect who get their news from fucking Nancy Grace, et al, not us. I refuse to accept that we should wallow with those shitheads.

Why give in to the dumbing down of a nation?

Actually, strike that. That trite cliche doesn't accurately point the responsibility in the right direction, this is about the dumbing down of our own industry, not the nation. The overreaction to this story is A number one.

I thought about it after I posted the original thread on here, I'd go with it down the rail, if, there was nothing local which meant more to the readers' expectations and served them better. Sorry to sound like some managing editor hack, but I'd be damned if I bumped something that meant something to my community over a story that means nothing to anyone other than those sad fucks who can't live without living vicariously through celebrities, no matter how vapid, no matter how they achieved their celebrity.

In other words, if it's a slow news day it goes out front ... otherwise it goes inside.

Somehow, I doubt the republic (or newspaper sales) are going to suffer because Anna Fucking Nicole Smith wasn't fellated in the hour of her death.

I know that's harsh, but the coverage of her death makes me ill. Some of the coverage (I was captive in the airport with CNN, otherwise I would never have seen it at all) made it seem as if she was a martyred saint. Ridiculous overkill.

 

Yeah, Bubbler, but are reader interests driving our decisions, or the other way around?

'Famous' person, 39, been in the news a lot lately, just went through the death of a son, still involved in litigation that has made it all the way to the Supreme Court, dies under mysterious circumstances in a hotel.

I don't know that the coverage I saw -- I too tried to avoid it in general -- made a saint out of her. More just a curiosity.

 

It was the lead topic of conversation with a lot of folks I spoke with yesterday and today.

For me, though, the bigger question is whether someone is going to investigate the women's apparel situation in Mexia. My god, after seeing what the two girls on the left in the picture on p.1 of this thread are wearing, that has to border on abuse of some sort.

 

Bubbler reminded me of a pet peeve of mine regarding A-1 stories.

Too many papers only want to put "important" or "newsworthy" stories out there and will bury stories people actually want to read.

They also tend to put A-1 stories through gauntlets of editors when a brief on B-3 is just as likely to get you sued for libel.

 

For what it's worth Anna Nicole wasn't thought of very highly in Mexia.

 

Exactly. It's not relevant that I found her to be a thoroughly unlikable bubblehead who didn't even appear to mean well. The fact is, it was the kind of story regular people were talking about, so it belonged on page 1. And if fellow skank Paris Hilton dies tomorrow, she belongs on page 1, too.

 

Um, was it even newsworthy at all? Not in my paper it wouldn't be.