“Yo, dog! ‘Sup?”
“Pardon me?”
“We be down wit’ yo wack self. I mean, bling-bling is so ill, know whut I’m sayin’?”
“Uhh…no.”
“You be street? Yo, dog, listen up. We be lookin’ for…uhh, dogs whut be street…”
“I’m sorry. Are you Angelina Whitebread, personnel manager for the Deadline News network?”
“Can you get jiggy wit’ dat?”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like whu’?”
“Like dat.”
“Oh. Confidentially?”
“Uhh…sure.”
“We’re skewing old.”
“Pardon me?”
“We’re skewing old. Using Nielsen demographics collected over the last decade, it is clear that our audience is aging. We project that by the year 2010, as much as 28% of the audience for our 6 o’clock news hour will be dead. This does not sit well with our advertisers, who find they get a lot more business from customers who are, err, alive.”
“So, you want to hire younger reporters to bring in a younger audience.”
“Tha’s whut I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
“Could you stop that, please? You’re a middle aged white woman in an Armani business suit. Hearing you talk street is…creepy.”
“Just trying to make your bad self comfortable.”
“You’re making my bad self feel like I’m living in an excruciatingly embarrassing episode of Mel’s Rock Pile.”
“Okay. Sorry. The thing is: we know another war in Iraq is coming. But, when we covered the war in Afghanistan, we were slaughtered!”
“In the ratings?”
“Where else? We need correspondents who can make our coverage more accessible to a younger audience. We need people who can make war fun.”
“Like, singing and dancing?”
“Oh, no, we don’t need you to add visual excitement to our war coverage.”
“Good, because -“
“We have graphic designers for that. Did you see our animated ‘America Against the World’ logo? We won an Emmy for that. Would’ve won a Pulitzer for it, too, in any normal year, but we got smoked by Fox’ ‘America Kicks Ass’ logo.”
“They give Pulitzers for that?”
“They don’t advertise them widely – the Prize Committee isn’t exactly proud of them, but, hey! They gotta pay the bills like everybody else, right?”
“How exactly do you think I’ll be able to make a war fun?”
“We’re looking for attitude. We’re looking for somebody who is willing to have fun with the war, and who is able to convey that fun to a young audience.”
“So, you want me to…play practical jokes on refugees fleeing the war zone or…or ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff impertinent, irrelevant or sarcastic questions?”
“That’s totally up to you. Far be it from me to micromanage your coverage. By the way: do you have any tattoos?”
“Tattoos? No.”
“Would you be willing to get a visible piercing?”
“No.”
“I understand eyebrows are very fashionable.”
“Absolutely not!”
“You’re right. Not subtle. How about…purple and orange contact lenses?”
“Have you seen my CV? I have a journalism degree from Colombia and an MBA from the Shoelick School of Business! And, it’s a funny thing, but, in all the time I was in school, nobody mentioned that to get ahead in journalism I would have to wear purple and orange contact lenses and get a tattoo!”
“I know, I know. Shocking how little a college degree prepares you for life in the real world, isn’t it? Still, I wouldn’t be too proud of those degrees if I were you. If I shot off a cannon in the cafeteria, I would hit a couple dozen journalism school grads – and don’t think I haven’t fantasized about it! No, no, journalism cred isn’t what we’re looking for for this position. Street cred is…
“So, Ms. Washington, do you think you have what it takes to cover the war in Iraq for the Deadline News Network?…
“Ms. Washington?”
“Uhh, does it have to be a big tattoo?”