Media Cash in on Smith’s Death ; News Outlets, Net Supply Food for ‘Feast’
By JAMES RAINEY, LOS ANGELES TIMES
Hours after her death, people across the globe tried to cash in on Anna Nicole Smith’s celebrity by listing for sale items such as bobblehead dolls and poker chips bearing her image.
But positioned to benefit the most are media outlets that tried to feed the enormous appetite of its audiences. The frenzy has continued into the weekend with Saturday night’s airing of “Death of a Centerfold” on NBC’s “Dateline” followed by Fox News’ hour-long special “Anna Nicole: Tragic Beauty.”
“This is just a real feast for some people out there, and particularly on the Internet,” said Larry Pryor, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. “For every person in public life, there is a blogger, or in this case, many bloggers behind them.”
The mysterious death in a Florida hotel room that saddened friends and has set off a paternity fight over Smith’s 5-month-old daughter is producing some odd and opportunistic commerce.
Less than half an hour after Anna Nicole Smith’s death became public Thursday, memorabilia from her short life began to roll out on eBay. By Friday afternoon, nearly 2,700 items from Anna Nicole bobblehead dolls to Anna Nicole poker chips ($122.86 for the complete set) had been listed.
Another Web operator offered nearly 20 different T-shirts bidding farewell (after a fashion) to the supermodel, television personality and professional vamp. They ranged from “Anna Nicole R.I.P.” to the provocative, “I fathered Anna Nicole’s baby and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.”
With legal expert Greta van Susteren leading the way, Fox’s prime time viewership on the night of Smith’s death rose to 2.2 million, an increase of at least 400,000 over a typical weeknight, the cable station said.
Traffic on entertainment and personality Web sites rose 54 percent, compared with the day before, said Matt Tatham of Hitwise, a firm that tracks Web traffic. More than 14,000 blogs posted information, opinions and rants about the death on Thursday, said another tracking service, Technorati.com.
Although the story may have been stirring up an audience, mainstream news organizations demonstrated varying degrees of comfort with the story of Smith, known for her nude modeling, a sybaritic lifestyle and brief marriage to Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, who was more than 60 years her senior.
The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post played the story on their front pages Friday morning. The Times had the story on its Web site throughout the day, with a photo at the top of the homepage for latimes.com and links to related features. The Post took a similar approach on washingtonpost.com, with somewhat less prominent display for the story.
The New York Times ran the story on page 12 of its news section and, by day’s end Friday, did not even feature Smith on the home page for nytimes.com. While the paper did not overtly draw attention to the story, it increased Web readership by purchasing a “sponsored link” to “Anna Nicole Smith” on Google.
That meant anyone perusing the search engine for the supermodel’s name would see a link to nytimes.com most of the day Friday, which helped make it the single most read item during the day on nytimes.com.
“That means they can have it both ways, in effect,” said Pryor. “They can draw traffic to a sensational story on their Web site, but, on the face of it, they don’t appear sensational.”
Industry observers said it is becoming common for news organizations to buy search result positions on sites such as Google and Yahoo. The vast majority of visitors to news sites come through search engines and alternative portals.
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