I Never Thought I'd Write an Embarrassing Tell-All Article About My Bizarre Life, but Then I Realized: There's Money in that

Confessions of a serious journalist

Built from Dall-E using the prompt “a charcoal drawing of a woman looking into a deep ditch and at the bottom of the ditch is a star”.

I didn’t plan for things to happen like this. I always considered myself the type of journalist who would work her way up the ladder with pluck and moxie. But as I entered my fifth year at New York-based women’s magazine, I didn’t have a single feature article to my name. Meanwhile, my colleagues were landing 4,000-word cover stories about their bizarre marriages and the time they gave $50,000 to a scammer in a car. At first, I couldn’t understand the mindset that would cause someone to willingly publish tales of their most humiliating moments. But when my colleagues started landing book deals and seeing their articles go viral, suddenly, I could understand.

The more I thought about it, the more I concluded that the world needed to know about the multiple times that I smacked into rock bottom face-first and somehow kept right on plunging. For example: I lost my daughter’s college fund playing online slots. Telling that story would be a cautionary tale about how gambling addiction affects ordinary people…is what I told myself. I pitched the idea to my editor and I swear he got visibly aroused. “Yes, HARDSHIP,” he said, wiping some drool from his lip. “People must hear about the HARDSHIP!” He gave the Ukraine piece I was working on to an intern and had the magazine put me in a hotel, all expenses paid, to work on a draft.

I turned in a 6,000 word draft, expecting it to be cut roughly in half. But my editor called and said he wanted more! “We need to know more about your home life,” he said as noises that sounded like someone stirring a bowl of wet macaroni came over the line. “You lied to your husband about how much money you lost. How did he find out? Did you fight? Are you getting a d-d-d — OH GOD! — DIVOOOOOOORCE!!!” A good editor will challenge you to view a story from new angles like that.

The final draft was 10,000 words and ran on the front page. They made the graphics department work over Christmas to get the artwork just right. And the piece was a hit — it sparked a ton of conversation! One day, three hashtags about the piece trended: #HorribleMom, #SlotTard, and #BitchLostHerMind! People in my neighborhood suddenly knew me as “the woman Dave Ramsay called ‘every self-destructive financial impulse in human form.’” I even got recognized when I picked my daughter up from community college!

Determined to prove that I wasn’t a one-trick pony, I went to my editor with a new story idea: In the 2010s, I had an affair with an illegal immigrant and threatened to have him deported unless he took part in my super-kinky Spongebob Squarepants-themed sexual fantasies. When I pitched this, my editor immediately got up and ran into the bathroom. “20,000 words!” he yelled through the closed door. Clearly, I had earned his respect.

The piece about my affair was a bigger hit than the online slots piece! And my piece about my husband leaving me over the affair piece was a bigger hit, still! The key to journalistic stardom had been inside me all along. And now that I’ve developed a signature style, I have loads of ideas for incisive, illuminating stories. For example: I’ve done blackface. I jerked off a police horse. I kicked Rosalynn Carter in the neck a week before she died. I think America needs to hear and learn from these stories. And I also need a paycheck, pronto, because I gave all my money to a Nigerian prince and he hasn’t wired me back yet.

Young journalists often ask me for advice. I tell them two things: First, life is for living! Get out there, have experiences! Join a cult! Take drugs given to you by someone you don’t know! Sleep with a mob boss and then call his wife several times a day! I have a saying: “No commotion, no promotion”. My second piece of advice is that any serious journalist must — MUST! — expose their intimate areas like a gal in crotchless panties at a five dollar peep show. Let no low moment go unchronicled, no awful decision go unshared. Describe every humiliating moment and devastating brain malfunction in Proustian detail until you can practically feel readers across the globe thinking “bitch, what is wrong with you?”

I used to think that journalism had something to do with recording information or commenting on events. But now I know that it’s about turning your life into a freak show and charging people to gawk. It’s about telling a story — your story — and ensuring that your story is so pitiable that people can’t turn away. It’s about the narcissism of living your life in public combined with the willingness to debase yourself for clicks combined with the unhealthy impulse to wallow in the heavy gloom of bad events. There will always be demand for articles that make people think “well, at least I’m not that sad fuck.” And as long as I’m working, there will always be supply.

Now, if you’ll excuse me: I just shit my pants at an Applebee’s, and I’m on a deadline.

For the lawyers: This is a bit. There’s no Stephanie Sherman. Her byline photo is a stock photo from S.M.H.M.

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