Anna Nicole Coverage -- The Good News

"The bosomy blonde’s demise consumed a staggering 50% of the cable newshole PEJ examined on February 8 and 9. Those are levels reminiscent of those pre-9/11 celebrity sagas—think Princess Di and JFK Jr." --
Project for Excellence in Journalism
It seemed to me that the story was sucking all the oxygen out of the room (for as long as I could bear to watch) but the PEJ News Coverage Index for Feb 4-9 calculates that the death of Anna Nicole Smith was only the third most covered story overall -- 10% of the newshole, compared to 12% for "Iraq Policy" and 11% for "Events in Iraq."

Even better: ANS comes up 5th online (behind even The Runaway Astronaut). In newspapers -- with a much tougher news hole environment -- the story isn't among the top 5.

Even worse: ANS was 8% of the tiny network news hole and a whopping 50% of the limitless cable news hole on Thursday, the day she died, and Friday.

But the Iraq War continued to fundamentally dominate.
Even in a week of such Anna Nicole mania, the war in Iraq remained a media priority. The debate over Iraq strategy was the biggest story for the fourth time in six weeks. Yet the situation on the ground in Iraq (at 10%) generated its highest level of overall coverage and was the leading story in both the newspaper and online sectors.

Comments

Anonymous said…
But don't you get a sense of sad ennui about all this? Or is it just me who feels that the cable media, especially, are pushing too hard against something the audience doesn't actually care about? They say that the state of American media is all the fault of an audience that wants a steady diet of this stuff. But I feel like there's force-feeding going on here. Am I alone in this?

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