Vegas Publicity Makes News for "Sensual" Dita Show
Frequently coverage of Las Vegas reads like a press release. Often there is a good reason for that: Journalists trust and depend on publicists too much. For example, yesterday I quoted a press release (with quotes) about the Crazy Horse Paris show at MGM adding Dita Von Teese as a guest performer that included this sentence: "Dita will perform her sensual ‘Le Bain’ bathtub act, evoking the spirit of the 1950s Crazy Horse star Candida, who lathered and bathed herself on stage more than 1,500 times." Today a variation of this sentence without quotes appears in both the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun.
Here is the Sun's version:
"Von Teese will perform the sensual 'Le Bain' bathtub act made famous in the 1950s by 'Crazy Horse' fixture Candida, who bathed herself onstage more than 1,500 times as one of the high-water marks in the show's long history."
and, here is the Review-Journal:
"She will perform her sensual 'Le Bain' bathtub act, channeling the spirit of the 1950s Crazy Horse star Candida, who perfomed it at the Paris club more than 1,500 times."
Of course, on some level we have to trust the publicists for information on some facts but something about how the more evaluative word "sensual" worked its way into both stories from the press release seems wrong.
To identify those two writers, Norm Clarke and John Katsilometes, as “journalists” is something of a stretch. Norm(!) has a long track record of printing mistakes, not to mention a well-known network of publicists who e-mail him reports of celebrities who may or may not have actually visited their employers’ nightclub, hotel or restaurant. Katsilometes treats readers to sightings of hilarious vanity plates, and even does his corporate bosses’ dirty work every once in a while. So he’s not exactly Walter Cronkite. There are many more working journalists in Las Vegas who do a good job.
Posted by: Jimmy Yemenidjian | February 27, 2007 at 02:44 PM
Hi Jimmy, Thanks for reading and thanks for your thoughts. I disagree with you about those journalists. I have at different times been beaten on stories by both of them (actually, by Norm almost daily). My goal wasn't to slam them or even to single them out for what is a common practice in entertainment reporting. I only wanted to complain about the practice.
Yrs., Richard
Posted by: Richard Abowitz | February 27, 2007 at 03:47 PM