Erin Van Der Meer’s The Scoop is a piercing look at the horrors of celebrity tabloids, turned on its head: the call is coming from inside the proverbial house, here, as we follow the downward spiral of laid-off journalist Frankie. A once-praised New York journalist, Frankie finds herself washed up in a sea of rejections as she looks for work – any work – after being let go from her glossy magazine job.
When her desperation becomes dire, Frankie is offered a position at The Scoop, a clickbait-fueled tabloid. As she joins the ranks as a night editor, Frankie finds the night desk is a constant churn of distasteful fodder, yet her unquenchable thirst for achievement pulls her deeper into her quest for the kind of career she watches her old friends and colleagues achieve. The Scoop asks just how far Frankie must be willing to go to rise up the journalism ranks – and at what cost?
I spoke with Erin about her writing life, her transition from journalism to fiction, and how The Scoop came to be.
Lindsey Williams: You started out in journalism – did you always know that writing a novel was something you wanted to do?
Erin Van Der Meer: I never had any desire to write a novel until I was almost 30. I’d known from a young age I would be a writer, but I’d assumed the only realistic path was to be a journalist. Then, in my late twenties, I was boiling inside with all these things I wanted to say, but felt I couldn’t say. For a couple of years the urge grew and grew, until it was so strong I felt like I had no choice but to try to write this novel about the media, even though it seemed like a rather grandiose thing to do.
LW: How much did you pull from your own experiences being and working with journalists to inform The Scoop?
EVDM: In my decade-plus as a journalist, I never experienced anything anywhere near as dramatic as what Frankie, the novel’s protagonist, goes through (and thank god for that!). The ScoopSCOOP is a fictional exploration of fears and dilemmas that plagued me during stints I spent working at tabloids. It was a way for me to play out the possible answers to some questions: What if, in the reporting of a story, I went too far? What if something I wrote led to permanent, terrible consequences? How would I live with that? Who is truly culpable, the individual or the system?
LW: The horrors of tabloids are scathingly dissected here from every angle – corporations that run them, journalists who write them, paparazzi that fuel them, readers who keep the tabloids alive. Yet I loved that we, as readers, were along for the ride on Frankie’s “side”. Was this the first seed of an idea that became The Scoop?
EVDM: That was definitely part of the fun for me, to try to write a character who is complicit in things that make the reader uncomfortable, but for whom there is enough reason to root for, because of the pressures, both personal and systemic, that leave them feeling they have no other choice.
Because the reader experiences the world of The Scoop through Frankie’s eyes, I thought a lot about the different ways I could write her; she could have resisted doing anything immoral (this would have made for the least interesting version of the story), or she could have been a total monster, almost Patrick Bateman-esque levels of psychopathy. But I was interested in writing about someone who is conflicted. Who knows something is wrong, but nonetheless feels the allure of it, finds it difficult to resist. Who is forced to make choices that define what kind of person they are. The tradeoffs and self-delusions we entertain to survive in a ruthless world.
You are probably correct in guessing that was the first seed of the idea. I’d spent time in tabloid newsrooms, and I knew the circumstances of the people who worked at those places were far more complicated, nuanced, and messy than the broad stereotypes that exist. People were navigating the tension between their ethics and their need for a pay check on a daily basis. People worked there but didn’t agree with everything that went on. Great fodder for a novel.
LW: One of my favorite aspects of the book is its portrayals of relationships – friends, colleagues, mothers and daughters. How long were these characters living in your head before you brought them to life on the page? Did any relationship in particular come to you more easily than others?
EVDM: It took me about seven years to write The Scoop, and while I completely overhauled the plot several times, the main characters always remained the same. As frustrating as it was to drive down so many dead-end roads of plots that didn’t work, by the time I did figure it out, I’d spent so many years with these characters living in my head that I felt I knew them so intimately, knew exactly what they would say or do in any given situation. I’m glad that comes across in the book!
The relationship between Frankie and David – the tyrannical, verbally abusive editor-in-chief of The Scoop – was probably the one that came first, and easiest. Frankie loathes David, and yet she also longs for his approval. David Brown is less based on any real person (though I did draw some inspiration from first-hand accounts I read of what it was like working for some of the most famously unhinged editors in tabloid history) and more so, I think, a manifestation of my own inner critic dialed up to 100. (Several people have told me David is their favorite character – they love how shameless and unintentionally hilarious he is. I don’t know what to do with that!)
Frankie’s relationships with her night shift colleagues, Chris, Jocelyn, and Yenay, also came relatively easily. One of the more joyful parts of writing The Scoop was putting the four of them in a room, once I’d got to know them all well enough,and seeing what came out of their mouths. It’s a cliche, but in the night shift scenes I really did feel at times like I was merely transcribing.
LW: What music inspired Amanda and the Valentine’s? In my head—and this is showing the elder emo in me—I first pictured a Paramore-esque vibe.
EVDM: As a fellow elder emo, I can see that! It’s a good question, though I’m not sure I have an answer. When I came up with Amanda Myles – the celebrity the tabloid dedicates an outsized amount of attention to, upending her life – I wanted Amanda to be someone who had once been very famous, but was now living in obscurity, so that the tabloid stories would be an unwanted and unexpected disruption to her life (some would say unjustified). I also wanted her to be kind of punk rock, like Fiona Apple or Courtney Love, so she’d have enough bite in her to fight back (because, conflict) and maybe command the readers’ respect (though she is very flawed). I think some combination of Paramore and early grungy No Doubt, before they got big, is about right.
LW: What was your typical writing day like? Did you have anything you did to set the tone for yourself while writing? Certain playlists, snacks, habits?
EVDM: I have to write first thing in the morning. I’ve tried to write at other times of day, but my brain won’t cooperate. Sadly for me, this often meant getting up at 5am to write for a couple of hours before work, since writing only on weekends wasn’t enough, especially as the years wore on. Those early morning sessions are a blurry montage of being ripped from deep sleep by my alarm going off, flicking the switch on the coffee machine I’d set up the night before, splashing my face with water, and sitting down at my desk in the corner of my apartment, the sky out the window still dark, until at some point I’d become aware of light filling the room as the sun came up.
Weekend sessions, or times when I took leave from work and went away to write, were so much more pleasurable: starting at a more reasonable hour, no sense of racing against the clock, taking a break to go for a walk when I was stuck or needed to think something through. Imagine!
Music is deeply intertwined with writing for me. For the actual writing, if I can’t have total silence, I wear headphones and listen to anything without lyrics, mostly jazz and house. Once I understand the emotional tone of a scene, I’ll make a playlist of songs that help me feel into it, and I’ll listen to that playlist when I get up from my desk to make coffee, tea, lunch, or a snack – when I’m writing I consume a lot of cereal, toast, coffee, and cups of tea. I’m a big Earl Grey girl.
LW: What do you hope readers take away from The Scoop?
EVDM: If they don’t hurl the book angrily into the nearest trash can, that’s good enough for me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Erin Van Der Meer is a writer and former journalist whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Elle. She was a Spruceton Inn Artist Resident in 2024. Born in Sydney, Australia, she now lives in Brooklyn. The Scoop is her debut.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Lindsey Williams is a writer, former librarian, and Writers House Intern Program alum. Her work has appeared in publications including Book Riot, The Nerd Daily, and Rescripted. In her personal reading life, she gravitates toward literary fiction & horror – in both cases, the weirder the better. She lives in Arizona with her husband & daughter.