Some at the reception were disturbed to see The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman, in her trademark blunt style, grilling folks, notebook in hand, about Chasen’s murder. Finally, this cross-section of the film community not only mourned the loss of a friend but of a way of working, a civilized discourse, and the arrival of a more tabloid sensibility in Hollywood coverage, especially of Chasen’s violent death.
From Anne Thompson’s report of Ronni Chasen’s funeral yesterday.
Comments
9 responses to “Bears repeating”
The media’s a beast, and the beast needs to be constantly fed.
To paraphrase one of my favorites:
Tabloid journalists are like mushrooms you feed ’em shit and keep ’em in the dark.
She was reporting. That’s what journalists are supposed to do.
Time and place, Rob. Time and place.
Also taste and common decency. That’s what journalists are supposed to have.
Not to mention the underlying point here: Private conversations going on around town all week regarding The Wrap’s sensationalistic coverage (which is a pattern). Waxman has put more than a few off.
I understand, but I disagree. The “time and place” for a reporter to do her job is wherever and whenever sources are available to her. And “taste” is not a particularly important asset for an investigative reporter.
This was a memorial service with several hundred people, not an intimate family service. Her job is to gather information, not simply to go to an event and have thoughts and then post about it afterwards. Sometimes journalists have to put people off; if they asked questions only when they were told it was polite to do so, nothing of substance would ever get written.
Rob are you seriously trying to argue that Sharon is an investigative reporter? She works for an industry site not the criminal section of NYT.
(And clearly she’s not getting very far if the very industry she aims to serve is not put off by her).
Unles you can provide factual reasons as to why there was something to be gained from her being there in the first place, your blanket definition of the profession doesn’t apply here. Otherwise, anyone should be able to get ordained as a reporter and, pardon the expression, butt their heards into other people’s usiness whenever they choose.
What difference does the size of the ceremony mean to people who have came to pay tribute and not to entertain some opportinistic journalist.
The sources Sharon was chasing at the funeral and at an event held in Ronni’s honor at the Four Seasons last Tuesday are available to her on a daily basis.
Well, Maxim, ANY reporter who is a real reporter is pretty much “investigative” by definition. Are you saying that because she runs The Wrap she should just reprint press releases, or wait for people to phone her with “exclusives”?
I knew Ronni Chasen well enough to know that she would have been the first to laugh at the notion that every one of the hundreds of people who attended her service were there out of the goodness of their hearts. Opportunism is a byword of the business. In the quote above, Waxman is described as “grilling folks, notebook in hand.” Which I take to mean that she identified herself as a reporter and that people were willingly talking to her. So obviously, everyone didn’t take offense.