5 Students, 1 Quest: Entertainment Journalism Through Blogging

After a three-month hiatus due to the writers’ strike, Josh Schwartz’s CW teen drama Gossip Girl, a show peopled by preternaturally attractive new stars dressed in the latest clothes, steeped in simmering emotions and smothered by a thick coat of money, is back and bitchier than ever.

In an advertising ploy to draw in more viewers, Gossip Girl’s creators have ushered in a sex-soaked promo campaign. The ads (print and video), in a nod to the show’s text-happy teen and young-adult viewers, use emoticons (:-O), the OMG (Oh My God!) acronym. While the OMG ads are being showcased around a good majority of the country, in larger and more liberally populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles, a racier version is being showed - OMFG.

CW marketing chief Rick Haskins says the campaign achieved its goal by getting attention, even if some magazines, local stations and cable systems refused to run some of the ads. But “it was less about the shock value and more about speaking in the language our target audience (female teenagers) understands.”

The CW has also stopped streaming Gossip Girl online, in hopes to draw viewers to watch on television instead of the Internet. To encourage viewers, the show’s writers are incorporating much more juicy and controversial plot lines in the remaining five episodes of the first season. In the first thirteen episodes, Schwartz has already included a pregnancy scare, a marriage proposal, an attempted rape, a lost virginity, a near-deadly accident, a divorce, a suicide attempt, multiple thefts, blackmail, a drug addiction, a threesome, at least two counts of breaking and entering and an eating disorder. Some viewers are wondering how it can even be possible to create more twisted plot lines, but have no fear. The first three of the last five episodes, “The Blair Bitch Project,” “Desperately Seeking Serena” and “All About My Brother” make the previous thirteen episodes pale in comparison, and the last two episodes, “Woman on the Verge” and “Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing” are sure to top it all off, eliciting many “OMG” or even “OMFG” responses.

One Buena Vista University student in particular feels that The CW is hurting itself by pulling the Gossip Girl stream from it’s website.

“The CW’s decision to pull Gossip GIrl’s streaming is ridiculous. It’s only eliminating ad revenue that could have been brought in by streaming the episodes online,” sophomore Jason Jacobs, TV fanatic extrodinaire, said. “Fans are just going to start illegally downloading the show. The CW loves this show so it’s going to continue to promote it. I don’t think the show should be cancelled, but there’s no sense in lying to itself anymore. This is clearly a desperate ploy.”

Something had to be done though. The first thirteen episodes of Gossip Girl averaged only 2.5 million viewers per episode, but sales on iTunes have been outrageous, regularly spiking to the top-selling slot. Among network shows, Gossip Girl ranks No. 9 among female teens. Among total teens though, it reaches No. 30, tied with Dancing with the Stars. Despite lower than expected ratings, the show’s impact on the broader culture, from music to fashion, is fierce, drawing comparisons to the marks that Sex and the City and The OC (also created by Schwartz) made. Because it’s set and filmed in New York City, the show is introducing a new and much younger generation to the city Sex and the City glamorized a decade ago. And it’s key to the struggling CW network’s future.

Schwartz’s dream is to get 10 million people to watch the show, but such numbers are clearly not in the cards. Until, or if, Gossip Girl is able to draw in that many viewers, Schwartz just wants viewers of the show to be passionate about it.

After Gossip GIrl’s season finale on May 19 at 7 p.m. EST, the show will return with an extended 24-episode second season to make up for the episodes lost during the writers’ strike.

-Lindsay

Jennifer Pozner was only 15 when she wrote her first opinion editorial for her high school newspaper. At the age of 17 she started editing a feminism newsletter and merely a year later, enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. where she studied journalism, media criticism and feminism.

During her years at Hampshire, Pozner read The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism by Katie Roiphe, a book which “the mating rituals of a rape-sensitive community” are brought forth and looked at critically. Pozner found The Morning After to be incredibly inaccurate. Pozner felt that Roiphe took a lot of liberty with her use of statistics, using ellipses and taking certain words out.

“A book is a book,” Pozner said. “It wouldn’t have changed my life.”

However, this particular book certainly had an impact on Pozner’s life. Not long after reading Roiphe’s book, the cover of it appeared on the front of The New York Times Magazine. Pozner felt that The New York Times Magazine had not done any research, and hence, sat down with her red pen.

Pozner then started scouring the Nexus News Database, looking for anything to debunk The New York Times Magazine article with. Pozner thought that surely newspapers like the Washington Post, Miami Herald or Chicago Tribune would have credible articles debunking not only The New York Times Magazine article, but Roiphe’s book as well.

“Instead of finding stories debunking inaccuracies, I found dozens of stories that repeated the inaccuracies of the book - how date rape doesn’t exist; women are just whining,” Pozner said.

Eventually, Pozner found only two articles that had solid statements debunking The Morning After. One was an opinion editorial piece by Katha Pollitt, written for The New Yorker. The other was written for Extra!, a media monitoring magazine. What Pollitt’s article was missing, the Extra! article had plenty of - facts.

“Bit by bit it had a phenomenal debunking of both the book and trend stories,” Pozner said.

Pozner thought that if Extra! was the only magazine in the country doing this kind of “watchdog journalism” that she felt needed to be happening, maybe she should be working for the publication. Through this experience, Pozner became more and more interested in media criticism and at the age of 24, Pozner landed her dream job at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), writing for Extra! In 2001, Pozner left FAIR after she founded Women In Media & News (WIMN), a women’s media analysis, education and advocacy organization dedicated to increasing women’s presence and power in the public debate. Pozner also created and manages WIMN Voices: A Group Blog on Women, Media, AND….

In addition to her roles with WIMN and Voices, Pozner also analyzes reality television, with a political and critical eye, uncovering misrepresentations and stereotypes in relation to gender, culture and race.

Following a presentation by Ponzer at Buena Vista University, I had the honor of driving her to the airport in Sioux City. During our drive, I specifically asked Pozner about reality television in relation to class. Two shows Pozner finds particularly damaging in relation to class are The Swan and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

The Swan aired from April 7 to December 20, 2004 on Fox. The reality television program took “average-looking” women and gave them “extreme makeovers” that included several forms of plastic surgery. Each contestant was assigned a panel of specialists - a coach, therapist, trainer, cosmetic surgeons and a dentist - who together designed an individually tailored program for her. The contestants’ work ethic, growth and achievement was monitored during a three-month transformation process. Two women were featured every week and at the episodes conclusion, one went home and one was selected to move on to the Swan pageant, where the women competed with each other to be The Swan (in opposition to the ugly duckling).

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition first aired on November 3, 2003 on ABC, and is currently still running. The show is hosted by Ty Pennington, formerly a carpenter on the TLC reality show Trading Spaces. It is sponsored by Sears (and their properties, Craftsman and Kenmore), for which Pennington serves as a spokesman and which are prominently featured in the episodes. The series is devoted to rebuilding families’ homes when they are in need of new hope.

Pozner feels that the producers of The Swan are putting the “ugly ducklings” that they makeover at risk.

“They’re giving them plastic surgery that they don’t necessarily want and that they don’t necessarily need just to make them feel better about themselves; to make them feel ‘beautiful’” Pozner said. “It is a proven medical fact that breast implants need to be replaced every 10 to 15 years.”

What will happen to these women then in 10 to 15 years? The women that were made over on The Swan were lower working class, did not have health insurance and if they have a problem with their plastic surgery, do not have the money for another operation. Pozner speculates that in 10 to 15 years, the breast implants in these women will go bad and explode. The women will ultimately die, and because no one will be looking after them medical-wise, no one is going to know why they died until it is too late.

“With the example of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, lower class families are taught to think that they need a 400 dollar couch or a 700 dollar refrigerator,” Pozner said.

What happens when these families are forced to pay the electric and water bills and taxes for their new fancy house? They obviously do not have that kind of money.

“What happens when their 700 dollar refrigerator craps out on them?” Pozner asked. “They don’t have the money to hire a repair man to come fix it or to replace it, so they’re just going to have to be without a fridge.”

Because these are only two examples of what reality television has to offer, Pozner encourages everyone to begin watching such programs with a critical eye and to get involved with media activism and criticism.

-Lindsay