New Semi-Reality Casting (4#) -

Further Adventures
of Foxy Knoxy . . .

It looks like one of the side effects of
the TOWIE and Jersey Shore successful
ratings is a new blend of celebrities . . .

This past week, while paparazzi fave Lindsay Lohan was unavailable, Amanda Knox became steady grist for the media mills which "feed the beast."

Even so, a small but noisy contingent of dissidents invaded some comment threads to object to the coverage. And they attempted to influence two of the most recalcitrant media organizations in the West: Hearst and the Fleet St DM.

Hearst is probably most famous for
an apocryphal quote often attributed to them:

"You give us the photos,
and we'll give you the war."

Anyone who knows anything about the history of this organization would know that it is futile to try to make them stop covering something they want to cover.

The Daily Mail has also made it their business to cover Knox. They are the last outpost of the almost entirely disappeared Fleet St, but they still won't surrender their flag, even if they have to pay out legal settlements
once in a while.

There must be Big Money in this, if the settlement just visited upon Rebekah Brooks is any indication of how much moolah may be involved. Didya catch that Golden Parachute which Brooks is supposed to have gotten?

Brooks "received £1.7m in cash, the use of a London office and a chauffeur-driven limousine as part of her severance package from the newspaper group."

I'm not much of a Celeb Watcher, so I'm not
an expert on all of this; just a casual observer . . .

The latest development which emerged today is a media war Nick Denton's Gawker has started against the DM, which Prof Greenslade adeptly points out with the observation that Denton has a "stalker" feature baked right into his Gawker website.

NB: "If you were a saucy reporter..."
I think the Gawker writer meant cheeky.

Despite Gawker's criticism, its sister site Jezebel is still covering Knox on a regular basis with the typical snark associated with Denton's organization, but his Jezebel writers add:

"The reporting on Knox's
post-acquittal love life has
officially gone too far..."

and

"Reporters have to stop
tailing Knox at some point..."

No, they don't! Hearst (the Seattle PI) and Fleet St's DM are 500-lb media gorillas who, for all practical purposes, can sit just about anywhere they want to.

Let's try to understand this more clearly: The paparazzi follow LiLo around because she has a track record of doing screwy things - like when she pasted the obscene message on her fingernails which accompanied her into court. The paps follow LiLo around because they figure the odds are pretty high that she's going to pull another screwy stunt.

They are probably following Foxy Knoxy around for similar reasons. Foxy has a track record of doing cartwheels in a police station, for example. She could avoid the coverage if she were more circumspect in her behavior, but she doesn't seem to care.

Do Hearst and Fleet St's DM know something we don't know? Yes, they probably do. These media organizations have a lot more cumulative institutional experience than most of us have.

:: Footnote: :: TOWIE ::

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