Paris Hilton news ban experiment

Did you miss her this week? For a short time the Associated Press decided to try an experiment and banned news about Paris Hilton for a week just to see what reaction it might bring. Well, for a week we got to hear news about events all over the world without injection of news about Paris constantly. It would seem that trivia took a holiday and we all were better off for it.

Perhaps the ban could continue and important news could be published - at least for a while...

CNN News
March 2, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) -- So you may have heard: Paris Hilton was ticketed the other day for driving with a suspended license.

Not huge news, even by celebrity-gossip standards. Here at The Associated Press, we put out an initial item of some 300 words. But it actually meant more to us than that.

It meant the end of our experimental blackout on news about Paris Hilton.

It was only meant to be a weeklong ban -- not the boldest of journalistic initiatives, and one, we realized, that might seem hypocritical once it ended. And it wasn't based on a view of what the public should be focusing on -- the war in Iraq, for example, or the upcoming election of the next leader of the free world, as opposed to the doings of a partygoing celebrity heiress/reality TV star most famous for a grainy sex video. Read more...