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Rumor vs. Gossip

“It’s just a rumor that was spread around town,” opens the chorus of Elvis Costello’s elegiac 1982 song “Shipbuilding,” best known in its rendition by Robert Wyatt: The shipyard will soon reopen, for a war is starting, and British boys will soon be “diving for dear life / when we could be diving for pearls.”


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The Rules of the Game

While the primary objectives of the publicity game endure—achieve fame; maintain fame; profit from fame—the rules have changed. The transformation of the studio system, the subsequent transition to “freelance” Hollywood labor, and the rise of digital technologies have fundamentally altered both basic and advanced strategies for “winning” the publicity game.