Joyce’s Reviews > The Line > Status Update

It was never about the money, she realizes now.

But the money is all she has left.

[Echo Park! I was just there a few weeks ago.]

Last time I spoke to his agent, she said he’s on a break.”

“Did his agent say why?”

“Because he wants to?”

“That’s what his agent said?”

“No, that’s what I’m saying. … What else is there left to do? He’s won at life.“

the “morgue,” a term real newsrooms use to describe the space in which they store hundreds of thousands of their clippings—

Whoever gets there first will be the tip of the spear, the de facto expert, the go-to for comments and commissions, and suddenly Hallie would be on everybody’s radars.

She has zero interest in destroying someone’s life—their reputation, their legacy, the public persona they’ve meticulously built across decades. If Porter Sloan really does have Aids, he’s already been served a death sentence,

Hallie doesn’t enjoy writing celebrity pieces, because it feels even trashier than true crime,

“Journalism is about truth. It has weight. The pieces I write are nothing. They’re vapor.”

the Times, the dream gig for any journalist in LA,

editor told Hallie that she wasn’t tough enough to be a reporter.

“I only just turned thirty and I’m already tougher than you’ll ever be.”

It was only afterwards that she realized what he’d actually meant. She feels too much. She can’t dial it down. stories become too personal for her— and she starts to lose her objectivity.