Chapter 251 (1/2)
“Tsk.”
Dongwook’s smile disappeared. He managed to induce manager Yoo to reveal the facts, but he could not see any hope of an exchange. An exchange only happened when each party knew what the other party wanted. However, that inflexible manager Yoo was loyal to his company until the end. Meaning, he did not want to reap profits from the news.
The offer Dongwook proposed to manager Yoo was simple. He asked manager Yoo for the name of the member that was cast in the movie. From the moment a rumor became a fact, it would have value. Dongwook thought about talking to a management-level personnel in the company behind TTO before he wrote the article. Usually, the company would respond in one of two ways.
The first response would be when the company cannot reveal the name of the member due to a non-disclosure agreement. In this case, the company would pay him to keep it in secret. The second response would be when it wouldn’t matter even if it was known to the public. In this case, he could just write the article and post it. He would then receive his manuscript fee and the extra pay for the article being exclusive.
In either case, he would be earning money, so he said that he would give some of the profits to manager Yoo, but he was rejected.
“Should I just post?”
Dongwook took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. It was easy to post the article. The editor was blinded by money. The article would be given the okay without even a single edit once it was deemed profitable. However, the problem came afterwards. The company behind TTO might take action.
“I can’t do that.”
He spat out a sigh that was mixed with smoke. There was no fool in this world that would start a losing fight. Dongwook wanted to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the company behind TTO. Though, they wouldn’t see it as a symbiotic relationship but a parasitic one.
In the old days, journalists had power beyond imagination. In the days when newspapers were the only sources of the news, journalists were treated as VIPs regardless of whether they specialized in entertainment, political, or economical journalism. There were times when a single article from a journalist finished off the career of a bigshot politician, or ruined a popular celebrity. In those days, the tip of their pens had power.
On top of that, the quality and the nature of the articles changed as well. Before, articles received praise for the deep consideration of the words used and the intent behind it, but now, speed was everything. No matter how great an article was, once it was posted on the internet, it would instantly be copied and pasted before being posted somewhere else. In the newspaper era, companies required a whole day to catch up with other companies on some exclusive news, but now, it was done within mere minutes.
With that being the case, what would the journalists themselves feel about their articles being copied and pasted somewhere else and lose that ‘exclusive’ title even after all their painstaking effort to create it?
They thought that the era of depth was over, and that now was the era of speed.
The result of that was the birth of private internet news companies. Even the big 3 news companies were constantly refreshing each other’s websites to scour for news. As soon as something went up, the articles would be copied with the header ‘some other media claims’.
However, speed wasn’t enough to receive the clicks of the viewers. Without clicks, the company would lose ad revenue and eventually go out of business. As such, they now poured more effort into making titles. The journalists did all the hard work, so the next task at hand was to quickly monopolize the clickbait titles and attract attention from the readers.
Dongwook once also aspired to be a ‘true’ journalist. He grew up watching journalists that saved scapegoats that were unjustifiably deemed political criminals and resolved that he would one day too become someone like that. This was why he prepared for the journalist exam and eventually passed it. When he practically lived in police stations as a crime journalist, he realized that it was far from his ideal journalist life, but he endured, thinking that it was because he was just a new recruit. He had faith that he would eventually be able to get closer to the police and work with them to write good articles. His thoughts didn’t change even when his probation ended and was given a proper job to do and was able to make a living off his job. He thought that he was still capable of writing a passionate article. He frequented police stations and fire stations like it was his own house to write articles. Although his articles were small and were very insignificant compared to the rest, he couldn’t feel more proud than seeing his name at the end of his section.
Like that, he slowly climbed the ladder of success and believed that he would one day be like his senior journalist, until one day, due to a coincidence, he looked back at himself. He was absent-mindedly sketching out a story about an incident that his seniors had instructed him to in front of the computer. His pen was no longer writing about the pains of the public that was hidden under huge scandals that everyone focused on. He was not writing articles that changed the views of the public but just an updated version of the article posted the day before.
His first article to feature the ‘exclusive’ title was about a man who intruded on a popular celebrity’s private life. When he was still writing the article, he felt that he had finally done something for the public, but when some time had passed, he saw that what he had written was a huge piece of crap.
‘What do I want to write’ - flashed by in his head, turning over everything he thought was ‘normal’. He seriously thought about it and resolved that he should start again with a renewed mind.
Like that, another two years had passed, and Dongwook discovered that he had become a self-protectionist. His monthly salary as a TV station journalist kept piling in his savings account, and just watching the number rise became his sole happiness. He sighed when he saw his colleagues teaching the juniors about the ‘journalist mindset’. He even talked behind their back, saying that they lived a hard life. After seeing his slogan, ‘True Journalist’, which was at the corner of his desk, stained with coffee, he threw it away. He didn’t even wonder what made him like this. He even rejoiced a little when he was transferred from the general section to the culture section. After all, he was removed from those headachy incidents.
A stable job - that was what journalism meant to Dongwook, nothing more. He didn’t even have a sense of crisis about it anymore. He just accepted it as something natural. Reaching the age of retirement before actually retiring became his dream when he was put in charge of a few people in probation. There was a murder case that shook the entire country but there were no longer any of his seniors in the general section.
Hearing orders from the head manager, he went to meet those little chicklings. When he saw that they were burning with passion while looking around the TV station, he smiled in self-loathing. He instructed them as he thought that they would eventually turn out to be like him.
Not long later, Dongwook quit his job. He was unable to comprehend what was happening even as he was handing in the letter of resignation. He would no longer have a source of income once he left, yet his body was already cleaning up his desk at the station. The trigger that made him decide to leave was nothing special. He just saw a probationary journalist being hospitalized after being reckless. It was nothing special. After all, that rookie was sent to the police station the day after. This kind of matter was commonplace. It would instead be strange to stay healthy while being a crime journalist. Dongwook had decided to resign after seeing such a common scene.
He had no clear vision of the future nor did he have any plans. It wasn’t that he dreamed once again of being a ‘true journalist’ when he was in his 30s. That kind of dream had already disappeared into the deepest abyss of his mind.