Elaine Low is a self-described “one-time cub reporter” who is now described as a “staff writer” for THE ANKLER, the insurgent entertainment website co-founded by a couple of veteran journalists who grew dissatsified with the direction and monopoly that Jay Penske has taken the industry’s legacy brands, including VARIETY! and co-founder Janice Min’s former purview, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. In truth, she’s seems to be much more than a mere staff writer, sharing a prominent place with the site’s other co-founder, Richard Rushfield on their very entertaining and free-wheeling weekly podcast and often contributing to their weekly filings on what remains of Los Angeles public radio, the oddly named LAist 89.3.
I’ll confess that I’ve followed Ms. Low’s work ever since she began a series of special profiles last year on those on the picket lines which she creatively labeled STRIKEGEIST. As a proud card-carrying member of SAG-AFTRA herself, she brought a unique level of connection and humility to her work, because as we know some of the best people on Earth are indeed folks who carry that card as proudly as she does.
But with the strikes finally settled as 2023 ended, she shifted her focus and renamed her beat SERIES BUSINESS, regularly filing reports on how much people are being paid for various positions, what the potential is for actually getting one of those jobs and reminding her readers that everything they thought they had accomplished by taking those dramatic steps hasn’t quite panned out the way they may have hoped.
If you glance through some of her more recent contributions to that work, you’ll notice a pattern of storytelling that mirrors what she began with STRIKEGEIST. One about an assistant director who made $7,000 last year. One about TV writers “new strategy (and) struggle….everyone is looking for work. A particularly dour one about jobs one year after the bloodbath: hope and pain.
Stories that no doubt the majority of ANKLER subscribers can directly relate to, whether they have been personally impacted or merely know someone who has been. In this town and business, there’s far less than six degrees of separation between anyone. Heck, judging by her LinkedIn profile, I’ve got less than that number in my own connection to Elaine Low.
Which is why it’s honestly upsetting that she chose to give a voice to what she purports to be another caste of strugglers in her most recent piece that dropped at the beginning of this week. The one titled Hollywood’s Top Earners are Worried Too: ‘We All Feel Lucky to be Employed’. One that opens up with this tear-jerker:
Anna* is a high-level TV producer whose company has an overall deal with a studio. She makes $450,000 a year, plus episodic fees and backend payments for a show that was recently on the air. Anna has two kids in private school, a home in an affluent part of town, recently bought a “very nice electric car” and built out a cabana in her backyard. She may not be a household name, but in the ways that matter to the people who work in this town, she embodies the Hollywood dream. (*Everyone in the story has a pseudonym or is anonymous to protect their identity.)
And then continues:
(W)hen Anna looks out at the next generation, she is “so scared for them. I’m scared for our whole business…I don’t know how you make it right now. I understand how you can have a few projects and get those projects sold. I don’t see financial stability . . . I don’t see how it’s sustainable when [the business is] treating people like they’re disposable.”
I guess we know why Anna has a pseudonym. Will save her the trouble of having to explain to the hundreds of others Low has profiled what exactly she has done before or since with people she has worked with who are Ubering, waitressing or Only Fansing who may very well be living in someone else’s cabana.
But Low did have the chance to press that issue. And yet, chose not to, or at least include it in this story.
She then pivots to yet another crocodile tear-crier with a fake name:
Everyone’s a little nervous. I love my current job and I’m making good money right now, but if I was smart I’d be putting away more of it,” says Janet, a programming head for a basic cable channel, who currently makes $1.6 million a year including bonuses…One of the “lucky ones” who doesn’t have to white-knuckle it through the day to day, this 25-year TV exec is still being mindful that she has a child to get through high school and college. “Kids in L.A. are expensive little creatures,” says Janet, who counts “travel” and “sweaters” as her splurges.
So yep, I took the step of calling Elaine out on her LinkedIn for what I felt was a remarkable amount of tone-deafness. Especially in light of what appeared to be her heartfelt interest in the more sobering tales of real need. To her credit, she at least took the time to respond to my critique and those of another follower of hers, one with pretty strong creative auspices of her own. This was how Low defended her take:
The part worth underscoring isn’t just that high earners feel scared about the current industry landscape — it’s that they don’t necessarily see their path to success as replicable in the streaming era. And that’s what many of them want for the next gen of creatives and industry workers — a road to the same kind of creative and financial reward they experienced.
But nowhere in that explanation, nor the balance of her lengthy article, for asking what these “haves” are at least trying to do besides offer the proverbial thoughts and prayers. Are any of them even offering informational interviews? Willing to connect the “have-nots” with people they actually know who MIGHT know someone with even a temporary need for manpower amidst the tumult that is still prolific in Hollywood this summer? For G-d’s sake, maybe even throw someone a bone for a gig to do errands while they shuttle their kids back and forth to school?
And we know THE ANKLER has a vested interest in kids’ schools. Do remember what Low’s less participatory colleague Peter Kiefer wrote earlier last year:
In the heated battle for primacy among Los Angeles’ toniest private schools, a new front opened recently in the most unlikely of places — the corner of Sawtelle and Santa Monica Boulevard. Actually, it’s not so much on the corner as it is a couple of stories above it. There, towering over this highly-trafficked intersection just west of the 405, stood a billboard that usually features ads for cannabis collectives or prestige films seeking coveted eyeballs of awards voters. But for several months it was selling something else: A $50,000-a-year private school.
The billboard was part of a recent rebranding by the Archer School for Girls, an exclusive college preparatory academy with deep ties to some of the entertainment industry’s heaviest hitters. Bad Robot’s head of motion pictures Hannah Minghella sits on Archer’s board. So does Vin Diesel’s wife, Paloma Jimenez, and Oscar-winning producer Frank Marshall (and, it should be noted, The Ankler’s Janice Min).
Oh. No coincidence, natch.
So perhaps Low is merely taking her lead from the likes of Min, who on the one hand claims to be fighting the machine that Penske has built up by creating a ecosystem where he owns multiple trades, the Golden Globes and Dick Clark Productions that serves as a self-contained loop for ad dollars, yet at the same time is now pursuing that very path with a few select FYC events that honor the likes of FX’s FARGO and Paramount’s FRASIER. I happened to attend both of those. They were not at cheap venues nor was the spread at the FARGO fete catered by Smart and Final.
I guess when you have kids at the Archer School For Girls, you hold your dietary standards up to a higher bar? What say you, Ms. Min?
When I see tales of “woe” like these, it makes me regret that I actually coughed up what few spare dollars I have for a site that purports to be more journalistically responsible that what they assert are little more than spin. Is STRIKEGEIST/SERIES BUSINESS merely exploitable clickbait that has no investment in actually helping those they profile, perhaps because they’re not in a position to throw some FYC bucks their way?
But I’ll cut Low some slack. She may just be following orders, as any responsible good soldier should. After all, she’s still employed, and apparently earning enough to indulge in tennis outfits and travel which she regularly is teased about on the podcast by her much less athletic and sports-loving colleagues. And I do enjoy how she snarks back at them when they even make their feeble attempts to call her out for it.
That said, Ms. Low, you ARE in a position of influence. Why not at least try to do some follow-ups for the people you’ve allowed to tell their stories? Perhaps share some actual hope for those who have actually navigated their way back to employment since you last checked in with them? I’d offer you’d have a much more compelling and relatable piece and you can assure your bosses that their traffic will likely improve in the process. You can advise them I’ve actually spent more than a few years in my own trenches and I do have worthy insights to offer should they be open to it.
And believe me, I’m doing my best to temper the disdain you triggered in me earlier this week. You know what those Democrats used to say. When others aim low, you aim high.
Until next time…