Women in Journalism: Fiction

Summary: Kind of fun, but not good, with cartoonish villains and a simplistic plot.

This fictional account of a female journalist and wannabe news anchor was a fun read, but not a good one. It held up particularly poorly next to a bunch of memoirs by real journalists. The main character simply lacked the seriousness and drive of the real women she was modeled after. She doesn’t have a clear perspective or career goal except ‘be on TV’ plus a vague admiration for Woodward and Bernstein. When she does investigative reporting, it looks like a bit of googling plus following some leads that fall into her lap. Although some of her bad decisions made sense in a workplace pursuing entertainment over news, the main character was one of my main problems with this book.

The supporting characters in this story were a mixed bag. They did have some interesting characterization. They weren’t just stereotypes and some had complex relationships with our protagonist. However, every non-white character was introduced by their race. There were also some decisions around representing accents that I found dubious. Our main character was pretty sexist about the more junior women working in news, a fact that the character doesn’t see and I don’t think the author does either. The villains are largely complete cartoons. That did help keep me reading this, waiting for them to lose out to our protagonist, but they weren’t believable.This was an easy read with fast pacing and a lot of exciting set pieces. I enjoyed how light it felt, but wish it had still had some substance.

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