And this was what she had to show for it.
@ElectraGuptonImagine thinking that young women finding clever ways to defend themselves against all the creeps, exploiters, and downright violent people in Hollywood is something to criticize. Shame on you, NYT. Scout Sage sounds like a hero.
@NikkiRamirezDid Scout kill the guy who got away with murdering her sister *and* a woman who helped a famous predator assault girls? I don’t know, but I HOPE SO. All theother petty bullshit this article brings up, that’s called doing business, sorry you have such a problem with it once the people doing business are pretty young girls.
@KateHergottI’m guessing this article proves Scout did kill two people (maybe more??) and we’re about to see a bunch of newfangled Sage fanatics defend murder. I gotta say, I don’t listen to the music—pop’s not my thing—but this is rock ’n’ roll behavior. Not to join the mob, but there SHOULD be consequences for being an asshole. Sounds like Scout delivered them.
@KrissyBrooksI can’t get over the audacity of this reporter. Who does Rosie Wright think she is? “All the evidence suggests Scout and her friends are the new Hollywood mafia, just chicer and nicer-smelling.” Equating women standing up for themselves with predatory gangs? Please. Wright tried to make Scout the villain but she should look in the mirror.
@EmilyZelenzI don’t think the powers that be are ready for the conversation people in this country want to have.
On and on the comments rolled, unfurling in pages of furious digital scroll, new voices every time Rosie refreshed. And that was just theNew York Timespage, where subscribers kept their opinions relatively tame. She’d been tagged so many times on social media she was afraid to look. The team that monitored social at the paper had warned her she’d already received three credible death threats.
She sank lower into her couch, refreshing the page again, addicted to ingesting the poison—when suddenly her phone screen showed Marlena Adams calling. HerNew York Timeseditor. That could only mean a verdict had come back on the follow-up story she’d pitched. Either that, or there was a fourth, more dire death threat.
“Marlena, hi.” Rosie straightened on the cushion, hoping her upright posture, and not her tearstained cheeks, would translate across the line.
“Rosie, how are you?” Marlena spoke briskly. Without fail, newspaper editors always sounded like they were late to catch a train.
“Uh…” Rosie glanced around at her apartment—dying plants, dirty dishes, greasy pizza boxes—and said a thank-you to God that Marlena couldn’t see. “Doing great.”
“That’s the least convincing thing I’ve heard today.” Marlena was out of breath. “Your story has gotten more traffic in a few days than all the other stories on our site combined. You should be out doing whatever LA reporters do to celebrate. Poppers?”
“Have you seen the comments?” Rosie’s austere editor was the last person she should be vulnerable around, but it came tumbling out nonetheless. “Readers are completely misunderstanding the story. They think Scout and her friends are heroes when they’re out there doing the same awful things men have done to us for centuries. They’re literal murderers—”
“Allegedmurderers,” Marlena sliced in. “Tread carefully.”
“Readers are calling me a shrew. They hate me.” Rosie despised how close she was to tears. It was just—she thought this was going to be her moment. She thought people would write multi-post threads about her diligence and bravery in uncovering this story, and instead they were dragging her name through the mud, calling her a handmaiden of the patriarchy, ironically the same thing she’d started out trying to prove about the partners at Gerson PR. How had it gotten so twisted?
Marlena laughed.Laughed!When Rosie said nothing, horrified, she cleared her throat. “Rosie, if you expected this piece to be received any differently than it is, I think you misread the national mood.”
“What does that mean?”
Marlena huffed. “Put your ear to the ground. This is what it must’ve sounded like in France right before they dragged out the guillotines. Or hell, in Boston before our ancestors dumped tea in the harbor. The dissent is deep. Peopleknowthings should be better, but they can’t figure out what to do about it. They see Scout as a righteous rebel breaking the rules they wish they could break, like she was sent to test the waters. Can I ask you something? Do you, by any chance, come from an upper-middle-class family? Zero student loan debt, parents still married?”
Rosie accidentally knocked a dirty plate off her coffee table. “What does my family have to do with anything?”
“Just testing a hunch,” said her editor.
“Is this why you published my article? Because you knew it would get this reaction?”
Had Rosie been set up?
“We published your article because it was newsworthy,” Marlena countered. “I was only sharing my opinion on the national mood.”
“Marlena, I’m afeminist. Readers should like me.”
Marlena sighed. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. Be glad so many eyes are on your work. You know, if you can repress your urge to be liked, there’s a very solid living in being a villain.” Before Rosie could react, Marlena added, “Which brings me to the point of the call. We’re green-lighting your follow-up story, and we’ll pay our top rate. What do you say? We think the next one’s going to be explosive.”
Thank god. Rosie didn’t need to think twice. “I’m already halfway done.” It was the only thing keeping her sane, working on this next piece. She never could’ve predicted that investigating Scout would unearth so many tangled plots, secrets consequential people had endeavored to keep buried for years. Scout had turned out to be at the center of a web, all right, except the threads extended so far, the woman herself probably had no idea.
The next part of the story would hit even bigger than the first. But more importantly—at least for her—it would put Rosie back on the right side with readers.
“Good. Get me your first draft next week,” Marlena ordered, and hung up.
Rosie wasted no time dropping her phone on the coffee table and pulling her laptop onto her knees. The outpouring of attention around her article, for all its negative consequences, had at least brought one good thing to her doorstep. Rosie opened it now, scouring the email from Dr. Janet Roitfeld, assistant anthropology professor at USC, for the hundredth time.
I’ve always wondered if I should turn this over to the police, but I worried it wasn’t relevant. And then I considered sending it to her family, but I thought that was overstepping. Maybe you can do something with it. Maybe it can even help you understand what happened to Georgia, since it seems, from your article, that you don’t believe she was killed by that boy. I only taught her for a semester, but Georgia was bright. She deserves justice.
