Carolyn Hinsey Fired!

[MarkH]

Well, as I said, it could potentially be a conflict of interest, when your primary employment is as the Editor of a soap mag & you cover events & shows & do interviews for that entity & then if you scoop your own mag with info that will go to print in the weekly newspaper column first. If you see what I mean, ... potentially ... So, the fact that many reporters/columnists do so, is not really the same thing as full-time job & job on the side, in addition, nor is it the same thing with an Editor position.

I have no idea her status at the NY Daily News, but one thing that sometimes happens is that people have burned too many bridges.

If you don't understand the potential conflict of interest I was speaking of now that I have replied, please let me know. Perhaps I can be more clear.

Okay, I've got it: (a) who gets 'scoop' rights?, and ( Editor position might be different from simply being a columnist at multiple sites.

I am assuming her employers at both sites had no objections. At the same time, if she HAS been simultaneously fired from all her employers, I wonder too if those employers are connected. The company that now owns SOD/SOW is Source Interlink Media. I wonder if that has any connection to NYDN.

[Contessa Donatella]

They're all in competition with each other. And, that competition is even more germane when one media has a short lead-time and another has a long lead-time, since far too much interest, time, resources is devoted to 'breaking news & spoilers' and, of course, the revenue follows what the media outlets are putting out.

Plus, and this has nothing per se to do with CH, the NY Daily News, etc. but just comes up because of your comment, ... there are strong feelings about the mainstream media and the soap press and treatment, etc.

[Contessa Donatella]

Great that we have communicated, always.

I've no idea what any of the corporate connections might be, between Interlink & any other entity (although I am interested in that), and also the corporate parentage of the newspaper, but, it's worthwhile to remember that for years Carolyn was a journalist at the NY Daily News, having nothing to do with soaps.

[MarkH]

They're all in competition with each other. And, that competition is even more germane when one media has a short lead-time and another has a long lead-time, since far too much interest, time, resources is devoted to 'breaking news & spoilers' and, of course, the revenue follows what the media outlets are putting out.

Plus, and this has nothing per se to do with CH, the NY Daily News, etc. but just comes up because of your comment, ... there are strong feelings about the mainstream media and the soap press and treatment, etc.

DonnaB, did you ever work for one of the soap mags?

Also, Detroitpiston's pic shows as an "image cannot be linked" error for me. Here is the pic he was trying to share (sorry if this is just on my computer...don't mean to duplicate)

[Contessa Donatella]

LOL, I wonder who did that mock-up. Personally, I'm already tired of seeing that picture. But, I frakin' love the mock-up.

And, to answer the question again, although it's new to be asked & answered here, no, I never worked for one of the soap mags.

[UKBoi]

That thread over at Jossip was quite a read!

[Loretta3938]

I hate to see anyone lose a job, but I feel a little better about my complaints with her going back to 2002. I'm not sorry she's been fired. She should just be a soap fan...not work to support the genre, because she didn't do it any favors. JMO, of course.

Loretta

[Errol]

The biggest soap story in awhile happens over the weekend I decide to clean the front gate of SON's house? Well I'll be...

[MarkH]

LOL. The new Tom Casiello and Sara Bibel blogs on this story are pure gold.

I agree a bit more with Sara than Tom. A lot of the angst is new turning to the quagmire of muck -- the outings and other nasty gossip that have nothing to do with CH or her fellow editors -- at that Jossip site.

Of course it is ugly. But I liken it to (bear with me!!) the race riots of the late 1960s or the Rodney King riot.

When you suppress things too long, they come out explosively. That was my point with the "Raisin in the Sun" quote a few weeks ago.

Ultimately, NOBODY cares about sexuality....I truly believe that there could be total flamers on the soaps, and the audience wouldn't give a darn. ATWT's Nuke made waves for NOT being intimate...not for their intimacy. Interracial relationships now routinely occur without a blip.

The issue is that an audience of writers and readers is SICK of a press that solely serves to deliver stories lovingly crafted by publicists. Everything is so routinely "on message". Case in point": TO THIS DAY, no legitimate soap press has fully recounted why LML came to be inserted at Y&R, how the process unfolded, and why she was removed. We have all surmised this, but it never appeared in print.

Yet Y&R viewers CARED about this news. The soap press NEVER delivered the news! Major structural changes were happening at this soap, and to date there is not a single "beginning-middle-end" recounting of the whole drama.

It is in this climate of "don't tell" that the Jossip thread has flourished.

Of course, what has happened is the growing of the blogs and internet boards. Tom Casiello talks about the nastiness of 2008 in his blog...but I think 2008 may emerge as the year in which strangleholds were broken. From the end of suppression may come healthy release. That is my hope.

All of this is independent of the constant funeral dirges for soaps (of which I am often a player). I think it may be too late to save the genre, mostly for reasons that have NOTHING to do with soap mags. (Indeed, if soap mags have anything to do with it, it is the industry of "spoilers" they created, leading to a situation where people no longer have to watch their soaps). Even then, I find this group-release at Jossip to be healthy and beautiful...despite the dirt that resides within. This is a community coming together, many folks trying to finally share HONESTLY for a change.

A void exists now. I wonder if SON and other places like it can fill it?

[Cat]

Great post, MarkH.

Somebody on Jossip essentially wrote an open letter to the soap stars who are undoubtedly reading the thread, especially with regards to rumors about sexuality. Something along the lines of "The vast majority of the soap audience is a lot more sophisticated than the drooling yokels you might take us for." ITA with that assertion.

Re: sexuality, I don't understand -- honestly, as a straight woman, I DO NOT understand -- why soaps don't want to go there as far as a gay SL is concerned. Mark, you and I have discussed why on other occasions. But, upon further reflection, it has been more than 10 years since Will & Grace introduced mainstream America to gay men alluding to a gay lifestyle (although I personally found Debra Messing painfully unfunny).

8 years since Friends had Rachel kissing Winona Ryder.

3 years since Andrew van de Camp rubbed up against GH's Lucas on Desperate Housewives.

Why is Daytime still so prurient about the whole thing? And yet they have no problem with misogyny and violence? Where are the censors then?

Not privy to SON insider dealings... but perhaps it is already on the way?

Either that, or Jossip opens a soaps-only gossip site.

[DeeeDee]

Soaps do.

S&P don't.

[Cat]

Uh, S&P? Standard & Poor's?

[marceline]

Standards and Practices.

[MarkH]

The only way that makes sense is if (a) they are still afraid of irritating midwestern "fishwives" (to quote Jossip)...the very audience they claim not to curry favor with, and/or ( Reverend Wildmon, AFA and their ilk...whose day has CLEARLY come and gone. To get that young, intelligent audience, you need to show them the world as it is...not the world as it used to be.

[Cat]

So. A "family friendly" comedy like Friends can get away with talking about it. W&G can get away with alluding to it (a lot). DespH can get away with some of it. Heck, Oprah and Dr. Phil and all those other more salacius Daytime talk shows can rabbit on about it. But the widdle bitsy Daytime soap operas jump a mile whenever Standards & Practices coughs in their direction? Soaps are losing touch with its audience because they still act like it is 1955!

Actually, I'm wrong. Daytime has crossed the rubicon of gay sex. Passions, when it was screened at 2pm on NBC Daytime. In fact, scratch that. It was gay incest. More family friendly!