Clickbait culture hits the headlines in Erin Van Der Meer’s biting new satire, The Scoop. Set in 2014, a time when legacy media outlets were facing mass layoffs, Marie Claire editor Frankie sees her glamorous career go up in smoke. As her former colleagues scramble to find new jobs in everything from PR to pyramid schemes, Frankie is left with a moral quandary: does she stay unemployed or join the ethically reprehensible Johnson News?
The interview isn’t very promising. As a night shift worker, she would be responsible for trawling social media to dig up dirt on D-list celebrities, and her would-be boss makes Piers Morgan look cuddly and impartial. But when a generic snap of a singer out doing some shopping quickly spirals into the scoop of the century, will Frankie jettison her conscience to come out on top in this new cutthroat world of digital journalism?
Funny, fast-paced and terrifyingly prescient, The Scoop is a searing indictment of our chronically online world, where shock headlines have become the whole story and the truth is relegated to an inconvenient footnote. After following Frankie on her frenetic race to the bottom, you’ll never scroll through your newsfeed in quite the same way again.
