“The Scoop” Is a Sharp, Addictive Satire of the Media Machine

The Scoop by Erin Van Der Meer

Author Erin Van Der Meer gained insider perspective and in-depth experience as a journalist, which served her well in writing the bitingly satirical debut novel, The Scoop. It’s an irresistible, stay-up-late, guilty reading pleasure about protagonist Frankie Miller, a recently unemployed journalist weighed down by multiple rejections from reputable publications and overdue bills, who reluctantly accepts a job as night-shift editor for the Scoop, a sleazy tabloid website. Due to declining circulation, she was laid off from her dream job as a staff writer for the fashion magazine Marie Claire three months ago.  Frankie had researched and written significant articles relating to women’s issues for this magazine with a worldwide audience targeting affluent, fashionable women with interests in food, interior design and wellness. Gone are the perks of travel, fashion shows, gift bags filled with high-priced cosmetics and, most importantly, a living wage. Adding to her despair, her long-time ex-boyfriend was currently making wedding plans with his gorgeous, successful and new girlfriend.

From Fashion Journalism to Tabloid Clickbait

Scoop’s editor in chief David Brown has a well-earned unsavory reputation for tantrums and outrageous tyrannical behavior that, while getting results from his underlings, nearly cost him his job with parent company Johnson News. In lieu of firing him, “The Man Upstairs”, as he termed the top brass, exiled him from London to New York. The mud-slinging industry was repugnant to Frankie, whose involvement in it besmirched her now-irrelevant honors degree in journalism. Unlike best friend Audrey, an Ivy League graduate whose wealthy family connections facilitated her seamless transition into writing for The New York Times, most of their friends and associates were also fruitlessly seeking suitable employment. Frankie was motivated by a regular paycheck and the tantalizing promise David dangled of an introduction to the managing editor with the possibility of a transfer to the reputable Business Day after a few months on Scoop.

Late-night competitive scandal mongering was a soul-sucking Faustian bargain she soon came to regret. As narrator Frankie lamented, “It was like a portal to an abyss had opened up in the air in front of me.”

The High Cost of Chasing Clicks

The Scoop’s 17th-floor office in Midtown Manhattan was devoid of charm at night, with windows mirroring back the worn grey carpet and rows of desks occupied by frenzied typists churning out trivial effluvia for posting to the website. Night writers were generally pasty pale, aptly testifying to their subsistence on bad coffee, cigarettes and microwaved snacks. Johnson News employees compartmentalized their jobs as income sources, and as each day shift arrives, they depart blinking in the sunlight to pursue more satisfying activities. Frankie’s colleague and work ally Chris was a climate change activist when not spinning titillating tales.

Quality was irrelevant; “clickbait” is what counted in David’s world, and this was Frankie’s responsibility as night editor. She sent him updates and end-of-shift lists of material published along with the numbers of “clicks” received. In response, he screamed, ranted and continued to increase the traffic goals for the site. The pace for the gerbils to spin their wheels was inexorably accelerating. Unless a luminary was involved in a major disaster, real news was secondary to unflattering photographs snapped by paparazzi who staked out popular events and celebrity hangouts. A private investigator that specialized in ferreting out scandals and secrets was on call. Blatantly fictional items posted under the protection of deniability demonstrably outsold factual reporting. Gossip, chaos and sensationalized stories were the trashy headline grabbers that reliably generated income from readers with insatiable appetites for yellow journalism.

Frankie’s personal life was a shambles, with friends not including her in their usual invitations, blocking her calls and generally shunning her because of her reputation-destroying job. The production demands and pressure on Frankie became so great that the foundations of her moral code were crumbling. Initially having created pieces that fat-shamed, she had descended to savagely humiliating a reclusive former pop singer/songwriter. What would it take for Frankie Miller to reclaim her integrity?

Positively crackling with energy and intelligence, Erin Van Der Meer has written a caustic masterpiece with The Scoop that may leave readers, as they breezily scroll through news and entertainment sites, questioning what is real and what really matters.