AP Ends Blackout On Paris

It lasted but a week. The Associated Press’ experimental blackout on news about Paris Hilton is over.

The AP’s Jocelyn Noveck delivers the sad news:

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.

So what did we miss during “blackout week”? The AP bravely didn’t mention Hilton’s birthday party (“at which a drunken friend reportedly was ejected by security after insulting Paula Abdul and Courtney Love“), nor a promotional visit to Puerto Rico to hawk her fragrance. But her name did slip into copy “unintentionally three times, as background: in stories about Britney Spears, Nicole Richie, and even in the lead of a story about Democrats in Las Vegas.”

One question, AP: How can “Paris Hilton” just slip in “unintentionally three times”?

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