Editors in 2006 still required TV exposure before readers would accept celebrity gossip

Evidence

Like Hilton, Kim Kardashian also had big dreams of being famous. While trying to make money running her closet-organizing business, Kim Kardashian often met with an editor at In Touch Weekly to pitch gossip stories about herself. The problem, the editor kept having to reiterate, was that readers had no interest in reading about complete unknowns like Kim Kardashian. She at least needed to be on TV. Hilton allowed Kardashian to appear in a few episodes of The Simple Life, and the two began attending events together. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 158

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the crux of the transition: fame pipelines of the mid-2000s still gated by TV. Worth tracing exactly when that gate collapsed into pure self-broadcast celebrity, since it matters for Marx’s internet-collapsed-distribution thesis.
• SHARE: The detail that Kim Kardashian started by pitching stories about herself to a gossip magazine editor and was repeatedly told readers wouldn’t care about an unknown is a perfect anecdote for anyone writing on the pre-Instagram mechanics of manufactured fame.