RateMyVanity.com, Inspired By Madoff Attire, Coming Soon; Readers Will Rate Newsmakers’ Vanity
RateMyVanity.com covers news from the worlds of entertainment, media, politics, business and sports, asking readers to rate how they perceive the vanity of newsmakers. Select stories will include a vanity poll.
The site was inspired by the Bernard Madoff case, particulary the garb he selected on the date of one of his bail hearings. Content, however, won’t be limited to business news.
Say, for example, the quarterback for your favorite team throws an ill-advised pass that gets intercepted late in the game, costing your team a win. If we write about the interception, we might ask readers if vanity played a role in the quarterback’s decision to throw into heavy coverage with the game on the line, instead of simply throwing the ball out of bounds and lining up again to give the team another shot at victory.
Now, take the Bernard Madoff Ponzi case, for instance. When we write about it, we’ll encapsulate the news for readers, and ask them to rate the amount of vanity in play in a given situation.
In the world of media, we might ask readers to assess the vanity of an anchor or reporter or host or opinion-maker in a given situation. Did Bill O’Reilly call out a federal judge because his heart was there and it was the right thing to do — or did he scold the judge because it was good for ratings?
Did Keith Olbermann call out the President of the United States out of principle — or because he was trying to curry favor with his left-leaning viewers?
The site message is simple: RateMyVanity.com: Vanity in the News. Rated.
The site still is undergoing some tweaking and testing. The polling system is working, and there is a test poll on the Madoff case. As it stands, the poll is a “dummy” poll, meaning the system will record responses. The vanity choices in the poll, however, were designed for testing purposes only and don’t include the degree of “sizzle” we’ll use in day-to-day polls.
Here’s hoping you’ll make RateMyVanity.com one of your daily stops. The site will mix serious news and fun, giving readers a chance to rate vanity in the news. Perhaps little vanity will be present in a given story — but perhaps it will be present to a stifling, maddening degree.
We’ll tailor the site to reflect current events, things that will having meaning to readers. The site will have some “attitude” — but it won’t be over-the-top. Over the weekend we’ll continue to tweak and test, with the site going operational from an editorial perspective Jan. 7.
In time, prospective advertisers will be given a chance to sponsor an individual RateMyVanity “Vanity Poll” and also purchase a display ad. The site is aimed at consumers, news junkies, folks who like dish, readers who enjoy a diversion from the ordinary, people who believe the news is an endlessly fascinating display of things that aren’t always noble.
