AP asks newspapers using wire services now to ''report''
that Walk of Fame stars costs $30K each and are
bought and paid for by studios as PR gimmicks; before
this AP never reported the hidden truth!
MediaRecoder - New Yark Times
by Peter Jeremy and Nick Cardavid
The stars are paid for. We're talking about the paid promotional
gimmicks on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, where each
star's star costs $30,000 and is bought and paid for by the studios
as part of their marketing costs for upcoming films, concerts, books
and other events that tie in with the "awarding" of each "honorary" star.
Note: Roger Ebert has star there, paid for by some friends in Chicago,
according to a newspaper columnist in the Windy City. CBS TV guy Bill Geist also bought his own star, paid for itself himself.
For years, this crucial background information was kept from readers.
But in 2010, Barbara Munker of the German News Service dpa, reported
a story from Hollywood that laid out the facts: the stars are ordered up by
the studios to coincide with marketing campaigns and cost money, now $30K. the DPA article was on the DPA international wires, but not one USA newspaper printed it or even discussed it. Danny Bloom, lone blogger in Taiwan and a 1971 Tufts grad from Boston, saw the DPA story in the China Post expat
paper in Taipei and could not believe his eyes. All his life, he had
thought the stars on the Walk of Fame were real honors, and
set up by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to honor celebrities.
Turns out the stars have always been a paid PR promotional gimmick,
according to Munker, who has since been quiet on the subject. But her
2010 article is available online.
Bloom, a big fan of movies and Hollywood stars, yes, set out to ask the
AP and Reuters wire services if they could start reporting the truth
behind each star unveiling photo op ceremony, as the DPA had done.
So he wrote emails to editors at AP and Reuters and the New York Times Phil Corbett and got positive responses. Two years later, the AP told its
Hollywood reporters to start adding a last graf to every Walk of Fame
story that states the cost of the star and who paid for it.
So it's a win win situation for Hollywood, the stars, and the reading
public. And thanks to the AP, where editors read their mail and respond
to good ideas, the truth has now come out in print. thanks to danny Bloom's
patience, persistence and powers of persuasion, the truth has been set
free at the Walk of Fame. Reuters? New York Times? So far, AP is the
only news agency to toe the line and tell the truth. BRAVO!
