Savage News Page 7

  NATALIE: Is he flirting with her via hologram?

  MATT: Don’t be bitter. I bet he likes slightly older uptight reporters, too.

  Natalie was grimacing at him when she heard a familiar voice at the microphone.

  “Mr. Bounds, thank you for your inspiring talk.”

  Natalie looked up just in time to see Reality Show Ryan read off a piece of paper, assuming the overdone seriousness of a mediocre actor playing the part of a lawyer. “Looking through the list of forbidden words...and it’s incredibly helpful. I see it says we can’t say ‘yesterday’ or ‘last night’? Why is that?”

  The Chief beamed at him. “Thank you, Ryan. An excellent question.”

  MATT: He’s a plant.

  NATALIE: No, I can guarantee he is genetically human. Plants might be more intelligent.

  MATT: I meant the question. Someone gave it to him to ask.

  NATALIE: Yeah I got it. I was making a joke.

  MATT: 80% less funny if you have to explain it.

  “The answer is simple. Urgency. We need urgency in everything we do. The data team says viewers respond whenever we declare an event unfolding now, breaking as we speak! If viewers feel our reporting is dated or old, why should they watch? Rigo missing? He’s still missing, something terrible could happen any minute! NOW-ness! Stay tuned to get the latest! For the same reason we need to use the Breaking News banner as much as possible. It’s shown to increase viewership by up to ten percent every five minutes it’s on air. That’s why I’ve asked that all producers should assume everything out of Washington is breaking news unless you’re told by management that it’s not.”

  Ryan’s smile made it clear he found the answer steeped in wisdom. “And if something really did happen yesterday? What do we say?”

  The Chief nodded patiently. “Another great question, and easy. Some options—‘this just in’ or ‘we’ve just learned.’ Might have happened yesterday, but we have just gotten a line on it. Make it feel NOW! And of course, you might consider the idea that if the news happened yesterday, you shouldn’t be reporting it now.”

  MATT: Because if you learn about the Watergate break-in a month after it’s happened, it’s lost its NOW-ness.

  “Great. So is journalism good or bad for ratings?” Natalie said under her breath, unable to keep the thought in. People ahead of her turned around to stare. Apparently she’d said this louder than she’d realized.

  “Ask that,” Matt elbowed her.

  “Shhhh!” Natalie glared.

  “Ask it!” Matt pressed again. “I mean you practically already have.”

  “Stop,” she hissed at him.

  “Excuse me?” a woman’s voice called out from the front of the room.

  The world went into slow motion as, heart pounding, Natalie looked from Matt to the space up front where Bibb was standing and staring directly at her.

  “Would you like to share something, Natalie?” Bibb asked.

  Please, please let this not be happening, Natalie prayed.

  “Surely whatever warranted an interruption is worth sharing with the whole room. Mr. Walsh, would you like to share?”

  Matt winked at Natalie and bounced out of his chair. “Hey, everyone. Matt Walsh. First day at ATN, this is exciting.” He adopted an overly formal tone as he looked to the Chief. “Sir, Natalie was saying she wonders whether you think that journalism is good or bad for ratings. Isn’t that right, Natalie?”

  In general Natalie wasn’t a person who believed in hexes or wishing harm to befall others, but in that moment she would have traded at least one of her lives to see a bolt of lightning smite Matt right in his seat. She knew she should have gone with her first instinct and ignored him.

  “Suck up,” she hissed to Matt, then stood up and approached the mic like a convicted person heading to execution. She swallowed and smiled at the shimmering image of her new boss.

  “Mr. Bounds, thank you for making yourself available to us. I guess my question arose because the last president of ATN told us it’s not our job to worry about ratings. It’s our job to do good journalism. So it would be great to know, what’s your idea of meaningful journalism? Do you think reporting the news is good or bad for ratings? Thank you.”

  Natalie could feel the room stare at her with admiration mingled with terror. It was the look you give a dictator’s failed assassin or Martha Stewart’s tardy assistant: you know the person will be disappeared within the hour.

  The Chief’s features softened. “Glad you asked. It’s Natalie, right?” he said pleasantly. “I want to say—and I mean no disrespect—there’s a reason that your former boss is, well, former. And a reason we’re number four.”

  The tension in the air made the room feel alive. “I’m going to give it to you straight. Your job, each and every one of you, is to grow viewership. Viewership grows ratings. Ratings grow profits. Profits keep the shareholders happy. Happy shareholders mean we all get to go to work tomorrow.” He stared intensely around the newsroom until the silence became uncomfortable. “We are not a star chamber elite, deciding what people should know. This is the news business. Starting today we give our viewers what they want, not what we say they want.” Natalie felt a chill creeping down her back. “Starting today, we win. If anyone has a problem with that, I invite you to leave now.”

  He paused to see if anyone would go. No one did.

  The Chief went on. “Good. Remember, people, news is our brand. But what we do is tell stories that viewers want to watch. Got it?” He stared out at his audience expectantly. No one spoke. “I didn’t catch that,” the Chief said. “Got it?”

  “Yes,” a few people called back.

  The Chief’s face got a little flushed. “What did you say?” he demanded.

  “GOT IT,” people called back.

  He smiled and relaxed. “Good. And we’re going to be distributing a survey to let us know what you think of this new hologram technology. We’d like to work it into our shows.” He glanced off-camera. “As soon as we iron out those kinks.” He turned back to face the room. “Thanks to all of you! And see you on TV!” He waved and the hologram vanished.

  The lights got brighter. People began to shift and whisper. Natalie felt chilled from the inside out.

  “Sorry, Savage,” Matt said, sounding not at all sorry. “It was you or me so—” He shrugged. “You okay? You look a little green. Need something to take the edge off? I always carry a few Xanax in my first aid kit.” He extended his hand, a tiny blue pill in his palm.

  It wasn’t the first time Natalie had been offered other people’s prescription drugs while working, but it was the first time it had happened on the newsroom floor. She glared at Matt. “Can you just let me out, please,” she said, desperate to get away from him.

  “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  She walked down the hall toward the ladies room and checked her email. To her relief, there was nothing fatal. No note from Bibb. No urgent message from Human Resources demanding her immediate presence.

  Dodged a bullet.

  “Natalie?” She turned to see a miniskirted What Girl walking toward her. “I have a message from the Chief. He’d like to see you. Fifth-floor conference room, one hour.”

  No, she corrected herself. You’re about to be taken out behind the building and eliminated.

  6

  The Age of Nielsen

  Natalie stepped into the fifth-floor conference room for her meeting with the Chief and beheld a sight that looked like Bad Dream Mt. Rushmore: Bibb sitting on one side of the lacquer table, with Handsy Hal capering alongside a What Girl at the coffee urn behind them.

  Of course.

  Of course, Natalie realized she should have expected Bibb to be here. But during the hour she had spent plumping her personality to make sure to sparkle enthusiastically in front of the Chief, it hadn’t cros
sed her mind that Bibb and her underlings would commandeer front-row seats to her humiliation.

  Natalie had been raised since her earliest days in the school of Always See the Glass Half Full. Her mind was ready to switch to “Well, things could be worse...” mode when Reality Show Ryan sauntered in, grinning. Yes, things had definitely gotten worse.

  Ryan looked like he’d tanned and whitened his teeth in the time since the town hall. “Am I late?” he asked, in a pleasure’s-all-yours way that that made clear he really didn’t care. His eyes landed on Natalie and he lit up.

  “Natalie Savage!” Ryan was now giving her an Engaging Smile. Somehow every one of his expressions looked preprogrammed, as if he’d copied them from a book called How To Be a News Reporter or Just Act Like One! “I am so glad to meet you in the flesh. I’m a huge fan!”

  Smile! Natalie ordered herself as Ryan opened his arms in a hug and crushed her into his chest. It was like being smothered by an overzealous yellow Lab. She felt relieved when she was released without being licked.

  “I’ve been watching your work since I was a little kid,” Ryan said with his most Endearing Eyes. “I just have so much respect for you and women of your generation. All the struggles you’ve been through.”

  My generation, Natalie thought. She was only six years older than him.

  At the table, an African American woman with dangling turquoise earrings began to choke, her earrings swaying mightily.

  Ryan shifted expressions from Endearing to Perky to say, “I know I’m going to learn a lot from you. Can’t wait to steal all your tricks!” He winked and circled around the table to take the empty seat next to Bibb, leaving Natalie to ponder the cruelty of a world in which conference rooms were not built with escape hatches in the floor.

  The earrings woman, with short cropped hair and eyes that seemed locked in a look of permanent skepticism, held out her hand toward Natalie and said, “Nice to meet you. Andrea Johnson.” As Natalie shook it she realized this was the producer who had been working with Ryan.

  “I heard about your dad,” Natalie told Andrea quietly. “I’m really sorry.”

  Andrea’s eyes got wide and filled with tears. She turned away abruptly for a moment. Then, regaining her composure, she gave Natalie a watery smile and gestured toward the empty place next to hers. “Here, have a seat.”

  The day before, Natalie hadn’t realized that Ryan’s Andrea was Andrea Johnson. She was something of a legend in the business. Spoken of by some people at ATN in the same awed tones as war correspondents who’d been kidnapped on assignment and Sunday show regulars who traveled with Clooney in Africa and knew the Dalai Lama personally. Natalie had heard other correspondents say that Andrea was one of the reasons the ATN DC bureau still functioned. She managed to get news out despite ownership changes, management shuffles, and an office culture that produced so many experts at passing the blame it could have replaced curling as an Olympic sport.

  “You’re the Natalie Savage that handled the obese airlift, aren’t you?” Andrea said.

  “Yes,” Natalie said, her voice sounding less confident than she would have liked. That had been a challenging assignment and Natalie was unnerved to think what intel Andrea might have gathered about it.

  “Heard you wrangled the best spot for a live shot and stayed up on air for forty-eight hours through the whole deal.”

  Natalie nodded.

  “And missed a friend’s wedding without complaining,” Andrea added.

  That was true, too. But it had happened two years earlier. “How did you hear about that?” Natalie asked.

  “Producers talk. A friend in New York told me to look out for you. Said you’ve got talent, brains, and tenacity—her words—and that DC is lucky to have you. It’d be good to make sure we keep you.”

  Natalie felt like she might cry. This from a woman the Pentagon had on speed dial? “Thank you.”

  Andrea eyed something over Natalie’s shoulder. “Oh crap. Brace yourself,” she sighed and Natalie turned to see Hal incoming.

  “Room for one more?” he asked. Without waiting for the answer, Hal moved a chair from one end of the table around to be next to Natalie. “I just wanted to say hi,” he said, leaning much too close. “We’re still due for drinks.”

  “Good to see you,” Natalie said as she slid her chair slightly toward Andrea but somehow didn’t avoid the arm that brushed her knee.

  “I’m so sorry,” Hal said, contrite. “Did I hurt you? I can be so clumsy.”

  “I’m fine,” Natalie insisted, even as she shrank away from him.

  “Ah, I found you guys,” a familiar voice said. Natalie’s nerves shot to attention when she turned to see Matt saunter in.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked out loud, before she could think better of it.

  “I was invited,” he said smugly. He nodded at Hal. “Thank you for including me.”

  “No problem.” Hal smiled in reply.

  Hal invited Matt? Natalie wondered, eyes darting from one to the other. Maybe this was Hal’s way of doling out punishment because she’d turned him down the night before.

  Now, judging by the stares around the room, and the look on the What Girl’s face as she pulled out her phone and started texting, Natalie deduced the rest of the group knew something about Matt that they weren’t sharing. She narrowed her eyes at him and opened her text messages under the table.

  NATALIE: Why are you here?

  She watched Matt read the text and ignore it. Jerk.

  He dropped into a seat opposite Bibb, smiled brightly, and added, with pep squad vigor, “Did you guys see the Dow? I caught CNBC on my way in. Our stock is up!”

  “Awesome!” Ryan said enthusiastically.

  “Looks like the Chief is great for the share price,” Matt continued.

  “From your lips to god’s ears,” Bibb replied with zeal, before returning to her conversation with Ryan. Now Natalie’s eyes narrowed as her mind raced to horror scenarios—was the Chief going to fire her and make Matt the new White House correspondent? Were cameras hidden in the ceiling, set to capture her humiliation?—when a voice seemingly from heaven boomed, “Goddammit! I said a—never mind.”

  Everyone was immediately on alert. Natalie looked up at the ceiling expecting the Chief to arrive in another stream of yellow light. Instead the big plasma screen at the front of the room flickered to life and filled with the image of the Chief minus the flowing hair and karate outfit.

  “Hello, group,” he boomed. “Sorry to be late. Somehow our tech wizards can produce a hologram but can’t figure out how to get the video conference up and running.” A look of anger flickered across his face before he rearranged it into a smile. “Well, good to be here with you all! My A Team.”

  A Team! That had a positive ring to it, Natalie thought.

  Seen close up, the Chief’s face was like a carnival caricature, a collection of rough-hewn features whose only unifying principal was that they had been ordered in size extra-large. The one exception was his teeth, which Natalie could now see were small and slightly pointed. They lent his smile a subtly sinister aspect, giving the impression that this was a creature to whom other creatures submitted.

  His eyes moved abruptly around the room, pinning each person with his gaze as he spoke. “I’d like talk about what’s next for ATN. We special few in this room will be the vanguard as we revamp news and give the viewers some relief.”

  He searched the faces around the table until he located Natalie and smiled. “Natalie, I’d like to thank you for asking the question that was on so many people’s minds. A frank conversation about priorities is the perfect way to set the stage.”

  She froze. Set the stage for what, my beheading?

  “I’ve brought you here today because we have one job, for White House correspondent, and two of you who are suitable for it.”

&nbs
p; From the corner of her eye, she caught Bibb and Ryan sharing a meaningful look.

  “I’d like to take the next few weeks to see what each of you can do. Who can bring the stories with the most novelty and surprise? Who can give our customers the relief and diversion they crave?”

  The Chief turned to face Ryan, who angled forward in his chair like a Labrador eagerly awaiting a pat on his head. “Ryan, your appeal to the Demo is a thing of beauty. Women, men—they love you. Hell, why wouldn’t they? Just look at you!”

  Ryan flashed his best Bashful Look.

  “And you, Natalie.” She felt her stomach go watery, panicked at what the Chief might say. “Natalie, you have credibility. We live in serious times and I have a hunch that some of our customers crave reporters with credibility.”

  Natalie couldn’t hold back a smile. I’m still in the game! she thought, relief coursing through her.

  “A couple notes for you, Natalie,” he said in a stern voice. “I want to see you smile more on air. People like people who smile. It’s attractive. Everyone has assets, so find yours!” Natalie felt herself blush crimson as the room turned to assess her assets. “And we need you to step up your hair and makeup a few notches.” He shifted his eyes to Bibb. “Agreed?”

  Across the table, Bibb and the What Girl looked at Natalie with the pained, pinched expressions of popular girls forced to eat carbs. “Absolutely,” Bibb said, her eyes giving Natalie an I-told-you-so look. “We’re working on it.”

  “Ryan, Natalie, this is your chance. I’ve got an algorithm we’ll use to measure your performance every day. We’ll call it the VOP—Voice of the People. It’s your Q score, plus your overnight rating in the Demo, your social media following, and online presence. We’ll track your VOP every day, and whoever has highest cumulative score wins the job.”