The Media's War with Paris Hilton (And the Reason She's Winning)

It's just part of the news business. The news media doesn't really mind being used by celebrities for self promotion. It just wants something in return for the self- promotion besides good ratings. It wants real news events. Ask ten journalists, even gossip column journalists, what real news is and you might get ten different answers, but mention Paris Hilton and whether she's real news and you'll get one united answer, "No".

To the media, people blessed with money and social status should be using that good fortune to help others. Celebrities should use their fame to raise awareness and money for good causes. Enter Paris Hilton. From the media's perspectivel her efforts towards humanitarianism somehow all seem to subside into nothing leaving only Paris Hilton's extending fame in their wake.

The media has also its longstanding notion, deeply held, that "they" decide what is worthy of news coverage and no one else. Paris Hilton flies directly in the face of that notion. City of New York University, journalism instructor Jeff Jarvis, called it a, "Paris Hilton virus", that has spread through the news industry in an MSNBC interview in March of 2007; It's an "[E]verybody's covering it, so we must, too", mentality that Paris Hilton is at the root of. In a world where journalism will allow itself to be seen as driven solely by ratings and profits Paris Hilton is a virus. She gets attention from a news industry that doesn't want to give it to her.

Since arriving on the international scene in she has been able to create for herself huge media attention without providing any real news stories . She can even do it by simply playing into her heir-head public image. Paris Hilton in 2006 once turned a routine press conference in Paris, France into world news by thanking France for naming their capital city after her. The media in the audience burst into laughter until they saw it appeared she was dead serious. Then the room fell silent and Paris Hilton was whisked off the stage by her manager. In 2004 she offered a $5000 reward for the return of her missing Chihuahua,Tinkerbell who was rumored to have been kidnapped. The supposed dognapping happened coincidentally the same week the book The Tinkerbell Hilton Diaries:My Life Tailing Paris (ghost written by Paris Hilton) was being published.

The stories and tales of how she create's publicity for herself are legion and the media's reaction against Paris Hilton has been predictable- mockery, and quick dismissal in the most negative terms. In this war, Paris Hilton is being forced to pay the highest price possible for the publicity she thrives on. Anybody who's anybody who bashes Paris Hilton makes the news. Even phoney news makes the news. Paris Hilton, owns a tiger", at least according to a March 28, 2008 web report pulled off of NNBD which is website that tracks the doings of noteworthy people. A more recent example was the the news that Paris Hilton was reportedly banned from attending the 2008 Oscars by the Motion Picture Academy. Paris Hilton does not own a tiger. Paris Hilton was not banned from the Oscars. Yet it was widely reported in online articles at major online websites like Ask Men.com, and People -Monster & Critics that she reportedly was.

Paris Hilton fascinates us because she symbolizes our base desire for money, sex appeal, and a life of leisure. "We're shallow", says Giles Hettersly of the London Times Online, talking about Paris Hilton in his article We'll Always Have Paris. But Hilton also fascinates because she is in a one-of-a-kind public battle with the news media over publicity and how she gets it.

It's a war the media is losing. The reason: Paris Hilton is unique. She knows how to thrive and profit from negative media overexposure. How she does it is something that journalism and the news media has yet to fully understand. In the information age it's ironic because there are obscure web bloggers like Chartreuse and Webomatica who do:

"If Madonna was Marketing 1.0 then Paris Hilton is Marketing 2.0.
She's a real life version of what value is and how it is created today.
Every web developer should pay attention to her. Though she hired
a publicist to get her on Page 6 She never really talked about herself.
She talked about other people. She would mention the designers of
her clothes, the club she was going to, who made the sweater for her
dog, all without any guarantee of any return. She just threw out links.
It didn't take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris
Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. She paid
attention to them, so they paid attention to her. What makes Paris
brilliant is that she used the attention she had and gave it to others
thereby garnering more attention for herself. And it's been profitable."

Chartreuse, 9/18/2006, Why Paris Hilton Is Famous (Or Understanding Value In A Post-Madonna World)

In a world where any attention is valuable Paris can't lose. At this point almost everywhere she goes she turns a profit of some kind for herself and someone else. The list of examples would be almost endless.

In February of 2007 Harvard University's Lampoon Society named Paris Hilton, Woman of the Year. Her visit there to collect the award touched off a bidding war among local hotels. At the last minute HIlton and her entourage switched from the Four Seasons to The Liberty Hotel for a stay in their presidential suite; according to Boston.com, a $5000-a-night-room at no charge. Who knows, perhaps at some point in the future she'll mention what a great presidential suite they have when she's on camera.

When it started, Paris Hilton was drawing attention to other people's products with no guarantee of any return for herself. Now others pay her huge sums of money just to associate herself with a product or as the case may be a nightclub.

In August of 2007 Paris Hilton and her sister Nicky began offering their services as party guests for the upcoming New Year's Eve parties in Las Vegas-for a price of $500,000. According to fametastic.co.uk, the New York Post citing an unnamed Las Vegas source, said Paris had asked for $100,000 to make a New Year's Eve appearance in 2006, but with Nicky along, and after her jail-time notoriety, her 2007 price had gone up. The source stated that, "it's unlikely that anyone will take them up on the deal because the tide is turning against the heiresses: [the Hiltons] are so desperate now, they should be paying the clubs for good PR, not the other way around". Here is the fact. According to news.sawf.org and In Touch Weekly and other sources, in this particular instance Paris Hilton did badly miscalculate her market value. She wound up being paid twice her asking price, $1 million dollars, to play hostess at the Las Vegas nightclub named LAX on New Year's Eve 2007. The biggest payday ever for a one-night appearance in Las Vegas.

In October 2007 Ms. Hilton signed a deal to travel to Moscow to sit in the front row at a premiere fashion show of the creations of Kira Plastinina, a 14 year old Russian girl. Her multi-millionaire father Sergei Plastinina reportedly paid Paris Hilton two million dollars - for her mere presence at show.

More recently thisislondon.co.uk reported Ms. Hilton told GQ Magazine she was paid one million dollars to go to Austria and wave at the people. There is little reason to doubt the figure.

According to Newsweek , she has turned herself into an empire - perfumes, clothing, shampoo, etc. She is projected to make $250 million over the next three years.

A source that knows Hilton, Giles Hettersly of the London Times, says she is helped by a team of advisers, but she hand-picks them. The overall Svengali is Hilton herself. And she's been offered $1 million dollars to teach a marketing course on "branding" by the Learning Annex. The only other higher paid instructor, if she ever accepts the offer, would be Donald Trump's $1.5 million Learning Annex fee.

Every war has its defining moment. Think of the defining moment of the American Civil War and you think of Gettysburg. The defining moment of World War II, D-Day. In the war between the news media and Paris Hilton the moment came on June 26, 2007. On that day co-anchor Mika Brzenski of MSNBC's Morning Joe Show while on camera, refused to read the story of Paris Hilton's release from a Los Angeles jail ahead of other national and international stories. "I hate it and I don't think it should be our lead. I just don't believe in covering that story, at least not as the lead story on the newscast, when we have a day like today." To emphasize her point she crumbled the newscopy, tore it in pieces and tried to set it on fire with a lighter.

US Magazine delivered a second blow to Ms.Hilton later that day announcing the name Paris Hilton would not be mentioned in their upcoming weekly issue nor would her picture be included anywhere. It was the second major news source that had employed the blackout tactic against Paris Hilton that year. The Associated Press had blacked Hilton out for a week several months earlier. Then NBC and ABC, which were competing for the post-prison interview, backed off, according to the New York Times, because they were under fire from stories saying that both networks had offered Hilton cash payments for an exclusive interview; as much as $1 million by NBC.

Paris Hilton appeared on CNN's Larry King Live television show for her post-jail interview; and she appeared for free. The media promptly claimed a victory. In a Reuters article about the appearance titled, Hilton sit-down: no payoff for viewers, author Barry Gannon wrote of Paris Hilton, "Hilton needed this interview far more than any network needed to give it to her". Many perceived It as a victory the news media and for decency in general; a turning of the tide in the war with Paris Hilton. But, perceptions can be deceiving.

Claiming victory and being victorious are two different things. Paris Hilton gave the show its its best rating in about two years according imbd.com, the movie/media website. As reported by imbd.com 3.2 million viewers tuned in to watch; triple the show's average ratings. By comparison, imbd.com mentioned that a day earlier, when the show's guests were the two surviving Beatles and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison the audience was less than half of what Hilton drew. Moreover, Larry King was savagely criticized by his peers for lobbing one softball question after another at Paris Hilton illustrating a glaring media weakness: an inherent inability to present any kind of united front against Paris Hilton.

Confused about its opponent, on March 28, 2008, Forbes.com did a story on their own current list of the 15 most overexposed celebrities. Paris Hilton topped the list. In a story titled, The Most Overexposed Celebrities, Lacey Rose of Forbes said "70% of the U.S. population would use the term "overexposed" to describe Hilton, up slightly from a year earlier". The Forbes story said, "the 15 stars on our list have proved that familiarity can--and does--breed contempt". Said Rose, "Hilton fans are loosing interest or at least getting tired of her celebutante ways. So it was hard to figure when Rose then said, "for Paris Hilton, overexposure isn't a bad thing". It's a media reduced to telling its audience how tired they are about hearing about Paris Hilton.

In December of 2007 Paris Hilton's grandfather, Barron Hilton, publically announced that 97% of his estimated 2.3 billion dollar estate will go to the Conrad Hilton Charitable Foundation. Hollywoodlife.net applauded action with the quote, "Hurrah! A Hilton with a brain!".

Paris Hilton no longer needs her grandfather's inheritance money. Neither does she have to worry about media overexposure. As for the loss of her inheritance, in an article titled, Paris Loses Most of Inheritance. Paris seemed to take it in stride. "I could be happy if I had nothing", she told Parade Magazine in February of 2008.

Within the infinite web realm of Wikipedia, the encyclopedic super-source of popular knowledge, is a page on people who are only "famous for being famous" . A controversial page since it's inception in 2007, there are those who believe topic is not valid and not suitible for Wikipedia. Nonetheless you will find it there. Within the discussion of this interesting phenomena is a list of 14 different living people who are presumably best examples of people who are "famous for being famous". You would win a bet that most people have never even heard of 9 of the people on this list. The other 5 people are... Paris Hilton, 3 of her current or former friends and Zsa Zsa Gabor....Paris Hilton's great aunt.

Famous for Being Famous
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous
Paris Hilton to Vist Moscow for Two Milliion Dollars,
english.pravda.ru/society/showbiz/23-10-2007/99336-paris_hilton-0