9:17 am: Sleep with a source.
10:00 am: Sleep with my boss.
10:58 am: Find a powder-blue Oxford shirt that doesn’t quite button up over my breasts. Buy eight pairs.
11:13 am: Internet.
11:45 am: Cultivate moxie, “stick-to-itive-ness.”
12:11 pm: Return to source’s house for more sex/to steal the incriminating book he keeps locked in his nightstand.
1:03 pm: Naked interview.
1:36 pm: Refuse to perform on-air puff piece about a cat show, demand to be allowed to
tag along on big story; decide to strike out on my own and get to the bottom of things after being rebuffed.
2:27 pm: Sex on newsdesk.
3:00 pm: Sabotage source’s career in order to get the big scoop after sleeping with him one last time.
3:02 pm: Stare expressionlessly at computer monitor as if to say, “What have I done?”
4:15 pm: Publish big scoop, receive “well done” from boss I am sleeping with, whose approval I am no longer sure I want.
4:51 pm: Sex in press room during office party. Feels hollow, somehow.
5:39 pm: Return to source’s house for a quick round of hate-sex and then to help him find redemption. Together we’re going to find an even bigger scoop. And then I’m going to have sex with that scoop.
The blue Oxford and the breasts. YES YES YES!!
6:48 PM – 11:22 PM: Put on oversized sweater & leggings, consume red wine while looking out window during rainstorm.
OMG am I a fictional female reporter??
It depends….do you have a Nancy Meyers kitchen or not?
(if you do, then no, you’re a columnist for a glossy)
How about red wine in a massive glass and popcorn? Or is that going too “crisis manager in DC”? Is the popcorn what makes the difference between lady journalist and lady crisis manager? Important questions.
the important thing is the red wine as the signifier of the brooding lady {insert profession}, in contrast to the brooding male {insert profession} who will be drinking cheap whiskey
Or outrageously, impossibly expensive scotch, depending on the type of brooding male [profession is not important because he is A Male].
If a lady is drinking cheap whiskey, she is “one of the guys” and “not like other women.”
Are we talking about Robin from HIMYI now? Because she’s a lady journo who fits the whiskey vibe well. Also: cigars, hockey. Too cool to be like ~other~ women.
Or just a beer, if he’s one of the guys and hardly anyone knows that he’s really a [insert profession/vocation that involves killing people].
Wonder if I should give it all up and go back to my clip-art gig. (Laughing over salad isn’t as easy as it looks, but it pays the rent.)
Eight pairs of shirt or eight pairs of breast?
Hahaha I posted the same thing above but deleted it because I am LATE TO THE GAME.
This leaves precious little time to develop an inappropriate relationship with a brooding, morally ambiguous vigilante.
Or an absolutely morally resolute vigilante with a penchant for bright colors, for that matter. Not enough 90s Lois Lane/ Teri Hatcher in this post.
I see a fellow fan of the CW comic shows!
That’s why they always enter and leave by the skylight–doors take up precious seconds.
9:17 a.m.- 5:39 p.m.: NEVER ONCE OPEN A NOTEBOOK OR USE A RECORDER during conversations that are ostensibly billed as “interviews.”
(the Journalism major in me hisses and spits at all movie portrayals of journalism. God bless Mallory.)
I have a similar problem with hospital dramas: Where Is The Purell?
Wash in, wash out!
The fictional female reporter is also a really good waitress at the source’s favorite diner, the kind of waitress who never writes anything down, brings you coffee without asking, and only occasionally returns to the table with an appealingly sheepish smile and asks the source to please repeat his order.
As a real female reporter, here’s my agenda on most days.
8 a.m.: Wake up, be mad about it
9 a.m.: Arrive at office, harass coworkers about something, check email
10 a.m.: Twitter said what?
11 a.m.: Start fantasizing about lunch, chat with someone on the phone about their news tip
1 p.m.: Start fantasizing about tomorrow’s lunch
1:30 p.m.: Wish you could somehow procrastinate a meeting for this county board, because you don’t want to go to this meeting at all.
4 p.m.: Emerge from meeting, write up story
5 p.m.: Witness breaking news, hurriedly Tweet, write and photograph, remember why you love this job.
6 p.m.: Meet up with coworkers, who you’ve been hanging out with all day, for an after-work drink because you think they are the best.
sporadically throughout the day: submit quotes from your fellow “motivated” reporters to Overheard In The Newsroom/update your running quote doc in Word.
(this is what I did as a newsroom intern anyway.)
You forgot “9am-6pm: gchat with your coworker who is two desks over about all the weird shit your boss says and that awful online date you had last night”
“8 a.m.: Wake up, be mad about it”
Every. Single. [Work]Day. for me. I will have achieved some kind of breakthrough in my quest to be a functioning human when I can wake up before 10am without being immediately filled with resentment at the very fact of no longer being asleep.
Literally same!
Sooooo 9:16am is the calm before the dick storm?
Indeed. And for a feisty gal on the city beat, it’s a dick TORNADO.
DICKNADO.
(That’s either the scariest movie of all time, or my new imaginary hair-metal band. Maybe it’s a song by Steel Panther.)
UGH. So of course I Googled “Dicknado” after I posted this, to see if it was a thing already, and of course there’s already an Urban Dictionary definition, and of course it’s gross and unfunny. *POUT*
Oh, no, that is made up, that is like purposefully using vulgar language in Mad Libs when you’re seven, because HAW HAW.
No, the feisty gal on the city beat runs a tidier ship than THAT. She can’t go get stuff dry cleaned, we know there’s no time between boffing to change clothes.
Was anyone else thinking, “Damn, that’s underpaid for sex work” all the way through?
this is so so precious.
Find out biggest scoop ever is that colleague is a superhero who writes about himself all day…fall in love.
If I were a journalist, I would NEVER refuse to write about a cat show. That shit is clickbait GOLD.
Oh my god those poor cats
Pimp Mama Kris has her fingers in a LOT of pies.
the greatest scoop
is
an ice cream scoop
Perd Hapley, is that you?
Well now you’ve got me imagining Perd Hapley in all of the female reporter scenarios above! Oh my, Perd… (blush)
When do I fit in sassing condescending older journalist in a flustered yet effective manner?
That guy on The Flash recently asked Iris “don’t you think it’s a bit on the nose?” and I said “what, your performance?”
Iris didn’t really sass him but he DESERVED a sassing the way he was playing it.
I love replying to people on television like they can hear me. It is oddly satisfying.
He actually toned down the dickishness after that scene.
Actors like direction.
I’m so happy you posted this. I’ve been fuming about depictions of female journalists for a while now.
You are just the absolute best, Mallory.
5.40 PM Get thrown under the metaphorical bus by a colleague publicly casting aspersions on your “sources”.
6.15 PM Stare moodily into the middle distance while pondering this new, unexpected curveball. In a cafe, with fifteen browser tabs open to websites and blogs all decrying your lack of ethics. At least one of these will be entirely in comic sans.
6.20 PM You have been spuriously linked to Gamergate because “woman”, “journalist” and “ethics”.
6.33 PM Your phone battery dies under the stress of a gazillion Twitter notifications.
7.03 PM Get thrown under a not-so metaphorical train by a source (c/f one of the previous sexytime interludes)
Don’t forget: Stride purposefully through newsroom on way to meeting and/or sex with top-secret source. Male colleague(s) working on far more prosaic stories turn to watch you with a combination of envy, intrigue, and barely disguised lust.
First shot on back of heels, cut to
torso in profile as men’s heads lean away from desks in cubicles, cut to
face in profile, just *slightly* twitching as the nerves harden, cut to
full body from behind at the end of row of cubicles, cut to
front of torso as it reaches the door and stops
Sex with a scoop? Well, since I’ve given up ice cream, what else will I do with it?
I miss the old school version, where you wear snappy suits, ignore your fiance, hide a criminal on the lam in a desk, and engage in biting repartee with Cary Grant before deciding you want to keep your career instead of moving to Albany to have babies.
Only thing I don’t miss about it is the bizarre and casual racist remarks.
Yes! Why are old-school Lady reporters the best, and the ones depicted in media now just terrible?
Rosalind Russell is a little goddess, and we should all strive to emulate her as much as possible!
Or even the old school one where you work for a tabloid that you can’t afford to quit even though you’re a good painter and could be a fairly important one. Then one day you get to cover the 2nd marriage of a society bride and Cary Grant gets you in the house and helps to straighten out your slightly immature boyfriend.
I think I’ve found the problem with current fictional female journalists, no Cary Grant to trade barbs with and prevent you from having all that ethically questionable sex.
There is a certain theme here, yes.
Did you ever notice that in TPS when the Mother says “Look at her hair, isn’t it pretty?” the mother has the exact same hairstyle? My mom pointed that out to me.
HILDY!!! I briefly wanted to be a reporter because she was so AWESOME. Also Jean Arthur as Babe!
Damn. You’ve got the entire plot of my novel right there.
Don’t forget about being hurled onto the train tracks by said source. Journalism is hard.
Ah, yes, in true TV fashion, if you are a woman who received cunnilingus from Kevin Spacey, you must die a horrible death.
Go back home to sleep alone in an impossible to afford apartment.
Still a better love story than Twilight.
How about “Demand official documents from a government worker who is weirdly resistant to the idea of giving out those documents”?
Seductively trace finger between barely held-together buttons of said (one of eight) powder blue shirt whilst peering over the rims of sexy secretary glasses and somehow convince government worker to hand over official documents.
“FINE! But Cat Fancy must never know that it came from me.”
1:47 pm : Impersonate a police officer to obtain information from a bystander.
1:49 pm : Break into someone’s house (again)
1:54 pm : Pepper-spray the person whose house you broke into; blackmail them when they threaten to call the police.
2:13 pm : Go public with the blackmail information anyway.
2:14 pm : Deliver sultry one-liner about the great value of the truth; drain a glass of bourbon in a mannish fashion.
So this trope is apparently a particular bugaboo of Audie Cornish, who specifically recommended Spotlight on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour last year (in part) because Rachel McAdams’ character doesn’t sleep with a source and instead just does, you know, her job.
I was so into the fact that spotlight just shows people DOING WORK, how work gets done, by doing it. Like…ok, lets talk to some people. Ok now lets make a list, oh that’s good information, lets make decisions about what work to do now, when we need to balance the demands of quality vs time. God. So hot. And she wore clothing that was regular amounts of professional- pants that fit, but weren’t perfect, a shirt that buttoned over her bra, etc.
Ask extremely insightful questions like, “Are you a terrorist?” to an actual and notorious terrorist, well-known for razing entire villages to the ground and conducting mass genocides.
“Why would the readers of Women’s Weekly want to hear about that? I thought we were going to talk about buckwheat pancakes.”
Ah, but this a special edition, “How do war lords keep it so tight?”
(with listicles on 10 ways to debone humans and look sexy doing it).