Page 34 of A Bossy Surprise

She sits up in her chair and her eyebrows shoot up. “You did what?”

“I told him about our history and Brady.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“Arthur is a good friend. When everything was happening, I needed someone to talk to.”

“I really wish you hadn’t done that. I thought we had agreed that we were going to keep this between us, at least at work.”

“And that still stands. I told Arthur as my friend. He’s not going to tell anyone and it won’t affect you and your work.”

“How can you even say that? No one is capable of that kind of compartmentalization. There’s no way this isn’t going to color his opinion and treatment of me.”

“How long have you known Arthur?” I ask and then pause. “Because if you’ve known him for long enough, you know he’s not that kind of a person.”

With that, a knock sounds from the door, and Arthur walks in and sits in the empty chair to my right.

“Good morning you two. What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. We were just shooting the shit until you got here,” I say.

Arthur nods. “All right. So let’s not waste any time. Kayla, the floor is yours.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says, then hands each of us a file. “As you both know, this is an election year. This is the biggest opportunity we are going to have for a while to show how good we are. That is exactly what I hope to do.”

“How?” Arthur asks.

“I want to go back to basics. I think our entire industry has fallen into the trap of trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the news. No one does news well anymore. Everyone is trying to make news exciting and they’re forgetting the basic tenet of the medium, which is to inform.”

“So what are you saying?” I ask. “You want to make news boring again?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t put it like that exactly, but yeah. I want to remove all the fluff and give the people the information they need without sensationalizing everything to death. Of course, I’m not an idiot. I know we need to hold people’s attention long enough for them to listen to what we have to say, but I think we can do that without writing misleading headlines and over-embellishing our stories and copy.”

“No,” I deadpan.

“Excuse me?” Kayla asks.

“No. We aren’t doing that. Go back to the drawing board.”

“No, hold on,” Arthur says. “Don’t dismiss her idea out of hand.”

“Why not? It’s a ridiculous idea.”

She folds her arms and stares me down. “How is it a ridiculous idea?”

“There’s a reason news providers across the world have turned to this method of providing the news. That’s because it works. In a place like today’s world, attention is the most valuable commodity, and everyone is fighting for it. We have to do whatever we can to pull eyes away from our competitors and onto us. The way to do that is not by doing what our forefathers did.”

She blinks a couple times, then responds. “What I’m saying is that I want to position GNN as a reliable and trustworthy news source. When the news coverage from everyone else hassucceeded in confusing people, I want them to switch to GNN because they know they’ll get the straight facts from us. If we join in the fray we will be no better than our competitors. That way, what will be our unique selling point?”

“We will come up with one that’s better than what you just proposed. Now, do you have any ideas that are actually good?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Is this how you are to your employees? Is this how you think you can get the best out of them? By insulting their efforts?”

“This is how I conduct business. I don’t pussyfoot around issues. There’s a lot at stake here. I’m sorry, but I am not going to coddle you. If I think an idea is shit I’m going to say it. There really isn’t enough time to beat about the bush.”

“And what makes you think you are qualified to decide what is or isn’t a shit idea in news? As far as I know you’ve spent your career, not even producing, but executive producing trashy reality TV,” she says.

“Whoa,” Arthur puts his hands up. “Can we please retract the claws? I don’t know how, but we’ve managed to get off the rails very quickly. Can we get back to discussing the main topic at hand and stop exchanging jabs?”