Daily Planet blunders

Lois was hired on the spot by a guy who was more interest in her tits and ass. And let her stay after the guy was gone.

They had a 24 year old as editor. okaaaaay

Hiring Clark on the premise that he little journalistic experience whats ever



And to think Chloe who was editor in chief of her high school newspaper for all four years (which is an accomplishment since in most schools your not going to be editor until at least your Junior year) Is/was going to college taking Journalism classes. And she had to prove herself and was still talked down to by Kahn

And it wasn't even for a job job, it was an Internship and from what I understood, from the episode Oracle she wasn't even getting paid.

Chloe qualifed for an Internship during High School, which is routine for Journalism students who are in college and/or High School. There is no pay involved, it's "grunt work" to garner experience. Very coveted spots for future Pulitzer prize winners.

And she did have to prove herself to Kahn for the actual job in the basement at the Daily Planet. Kahn hired her based on her writing, experience & *talent* as a reporter. It's one of the things I admire most about Chloe.

What I hate is that we still never got a real explanation for Lex placing his cloned brother at the Planet, then buying it. Julian seemed in on whatever the hell it was at first, before the clone news had him turn on Lex. But what was the final goal? I mean, we had references to him decimating the staff in Offscreenvlle. But I would have liked to have heard more about it from Lex's lips and seen more of Lex there and torturing all within, expecially J-Lo.

Was it just an excuse to manuever him into a position to fire Chloe? Seems like.

This is one thing that really grates me about this show. They just basically write a "mini-arc" to accomplish the end-point without caring to explain, or to make the "mini-arc" make sense to the viewers. The only thing that Grant seems to have accomplished at being at the DP was to hire Lois and subsequently continue to bang her on the office-desk. It's just really annoying because with just a line or two, they could have explained everything.

I LOVED how they got Chloe into the DP. First she worked really hard to land an internship while still in High-school. We also learn that Jimmy got an internship at the same time also (since that is when Chloe lost her virginity to the fuckwit (tm Remairmanbob, no? Then they show her interest to work at the DP at the very beginning of the show (season 1), they have her say that she "would rather deliver coffee to the classifieds" at the Dp as oppossed to working at the inquisitor. They give her a column through unethical means and let her learn the lesson that nothing can be accomplished through arm-twisting.

After that she applies for another internship, while taking classes in MetU. Khan gives her a really hard time again teaching her that whatever you do in the past can come back to haunt you, and she fights her way in by standing up for herself. She goes out, finds a story and lands the internship even though her story is not printed.

Basically, the writers went into great pains to show how hard Chloe had to struggle to end up at the DP. Which is why I feel like they have just grown lazy and decided to do whatever they want without caring how the viewers see it. I cannot imagine that they expect us to take Lois' hiring at the DP seriously. Are we suppossed to believe that she's so awesome that she can just waltz into the DP, get hired without any strings? That she is so amazing she does not need to struggle because she is Lois? Are we suppossed to think the same for Clark?

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating that I hate the fact that this story's ending is known. Meaning we know where Clark and Lois end up. It allows the writers to be lazy and to wake up one day saying, so Lois should be here today, let's just put her there. Screw developmet, viewers will just accept her and thank us because well, we are giving her the Lois "they know"; that is Lois at the DP! Then they high-five each other, and do a happy dance and pat each other on the back.

With Chloe, they did not know where her story ends, that is why they wrote her so well at the beginning. Her journalistic arc to get to the DP was awesome! It was a journey I could relate with. Hard work, dedication, dreams, mistakes, lessons-learnt and so on. When she walked into the DP in Thirst with such a huge smile, I felt her happiness, her accomplishment. I could almost feel her hopes and her determination to go "up, up, and away" from there on. That is why it's so diappointing to see the DP as it is now. Because the DP seemed like such a respectable place in "Thirst". Now? Now it just seems like a rag where anyone who wishes to be journalist, or who wishes to track alients, UFOs and so on can just waltz in and get hired. No experience necessary, no education credentials necessary. JMHO. YMMV.

The biggest WTF though is how is Lois going to be Clark's boss? I mean seriously? What qualifications does she have to be Clark's editor?

Best thread title ever. Made me smile :-))
What I find the saddest is that Jimmy seems to have much more experience in journalism than Nois and Clark. For a character who's supposed to be far behind, it's rich!
Now, if they really wanted Chloe out of the DP, I think that they could have shown her interested in journalism on TV or better, they could have waited the end of the show to make her move into another town, then becoming a journalist in another good newspaper (in Gotham or Star City or exemple...). I still think there could be 3 journalists in the DP if Nois hadn't been shown as such an incompetent since the beginning but that's JMO...

And Nois... is.. 25? OY, bullshit going on..




Which is exactly why the DP has no credibility at this point. It has been reduced to a rag, & all so the bar could be lowered to get Nois there. What a disgrace to the Superman Mythos & Smallville.

I agree that the DP has really come down in the world since "Thirst." I think, however, that AlMiles had every intention of doing a redemption plot. I always got that impression-- last year, we were shown pretty clearly things weren't right there. We had a Luthor in charge, and eventually the villain of the story bought the DP; our long-standing heroine of the DP got dissed, then fired. Unfortunately, the DP plot was muddy and poorly handled (Why did Lex install his brother's clone as editor? Why give him the persona of an editor to begin with? Why did Lex buy the Planet? and so forth and so on).

At this point, it seems there are two paths PS3 can take: 1. continue with the redemption plot (fixing it along the way and explaining some of what went on last year), and eventually redeem the Planet; or 2. just drop the whole thing and pretend the Planet is just as awesome and iconic as it ever was. Sadly, I get the impression they're going for #2. Judging from the interviews, we're clearly supposed to be thrilled that Clark and EDLois are working together there, and not at all concerned by the fact that neither of them is qualified, or that the Planet has been corrupted.

But I could certainly be wrong. Tess will be running the place, after all. Speaking as a Chloe fan, it would make me happy if she contributed to the redemption of the Planet, and was rehired when Tess got booted out. But PS3 could go the route of having Clark and EDLois redeem the Planet somehow, too. That would at least be preferable to never acknowledging the fact that its standards were lowered for them to get in to begin with.

Still, I hate that Clark got in this way. I would really much have preferred seeing him take a journalism class and slowly develop an enthusiasm for it, or start in the mail room and work his way up, rather than just, "Plop! He's a reporter for the Planet!"

No, the Biggest WTF is Lois proof reading/ editing his Obits, did you see the redmarks on his Obit? I mean I thought Clark was a good writer, now it looks like they are making him dummer then Lois in terms of writing.


He starts out as an Obit writer, not a reporter

The only real beef I got, you know Clark feels guilty over every little shit. I just... I want to know if he feels anything for taking his best friend's job, who was fired because of something related to him. In a sense, Clark got Chloe fired, and I just want acknowledgment on that from him, show he cares at least a little for what happened to his friend.

We've been discussing that on my LJ, griffin, and we don't actually know the marks were made by EDLois-- they could be from his editor, and she could just be delivering it. It makes no sense that she'd be editing... based on what we've seen of the DP, editors edit, not reporters. Although it could simply be because the DP has been cut down to a bare bones staff, I suppose.

Chloe started out on obits, too. Still, she had to prove herself to a Pulitzer-prize-winning editor just to get that, and she had professional writing credits, an internship at the Planet, and four years as the editor of her high school newspaper behind her. Clark really ought to be starting in the mail room, IMHO.

One of the things I remember most fondly about Lois & Clark was that Clark had been a reporter for years before either working at the DP or putting on the tights and cape for the first time. So he'd been traveling around, working at different newspapers, getting experience as a journalist. It wasn't something he'd fallen into. It was something he'd actively pursued.

And, despite all of his experience, Perry and Lois still weren't sure he had what it took to be a reporter for the Planet.

Now we have a Clark who's shown absolutely no real interest in journalism up to this point. Aside from the stuff he half-heartedly wrote for the Torch (which shouldn't impress anybody at a major metropolitan newspaper) he hasn't had anything he's written in print. Yet here he is, about to be handed (for all intents and purposes) a job at the DP. The same paper where Chloe had to compete with countless others to show she was good enough to work there for free is now hiring folks with little to no experience off the streets. (Which is pretty much how Lois got her job too.)

And it would've been so easy for the writers to show Clark having a growing interest in being a reporter over the past 7 years. Or at least in the past 2 or 3. The fact that they simply didn't bother still boggles my mind.

Honestly, i don't even remember him doing an article for the Torch. Yeah his assignments are usually tied to plot at hand, but I never seen him type up one, or anything. I know he used the Torch as a cover too but it's always been Chloe. Pete would help with layout and pics, we've seen that, but with Clark, exception for the lunch menu (which he doesn't do all the time) He misses his deadlines and wasn't into the torch either. So I don't see how he's motivated to be a journalist regardless of the Torch or not.

I think since "Perry" I had expected Clark to get into the DP based on an old newspaper hound's instict for who will make a good reporter. I had assumed that while Clark wouldn't have had as good a background as Chloe, Perry would step in and repay him for saving his life long ago and hire him. I didn't altogether love the idea of Clark getting handed a job, but I could accept it because Perry had seen promise in his writing.

But without a trusted editor to do the hiring and make exceptions to the rules I can't blindly ignore his lack of qualifications. Another thing that is just glaring has been his lack of interest in working for the paper. Why couldn't they have let him pine a bit for his youthful plans. Yes he was commited to stepping into his father's footsteps and save the farm, but if TPTB had only showed him displaying the slightest interest or regret we wouldn't be doing the WTF dance right now.

The first 4 years they kept him dabbling in journalism, but then had him show no interest for the next 3. Why couldn't he have said something to the effect of "I had thought that one day maybe I would be writing at the Planet too, but all that has changed." He still could have stayed on the farm but we in the audience would know what lingers in his heart. Instead the only reason we have for him suddenly wanting to work at the Planet is because it is ICONIC! Yes he want's to use it as a police scanner (why not buy an actual plolice scanner?) but he had that idea implanted in his head back in season 5 and didn't act upon it. Why now?

Are we to believe that the simple removal of Lana means that he now embraces his destiny? I'm all for it, but the show doesn't support that. Could it be that the main reason Clark signs on at the DP be that he used to rely on Chloe for her access and now that she's gone is trying to step into her shoes?

I'm squinting here pretty hard.

The entire Daily Planet bullshit last season drove me up the friggin wall. There were so many plotholes that it made absolutely no sense and I have no idea where to begin.

In earlier seasons of the show but especially in Thirst we understood why the DP was important. We understood why it had this allure, why it was legendary, why it mattered.

This season, and not just because of its hiring practices, it seemed like just a place to work. It presented no glory, it commanded no respect. It was merely a set.

Then Grant comes in. Why? Who hires him? Is Kahn fired? Clearly Lex had to have him hired, but why? Especially if he planned to buy the paper later anyway.

Grant hires Lois- why? Did Lex put him up to it? Was it just because he found her hot and easy? We never figured that out either.

The newspaper becomes more tabloidy. Does anyone care? More importantly, does the public care? Does the public notice? How tabloidy is it? Is it National Enquirer? NY Post? We have no outside frame of reference.

Lex buys the DP- again, why? How does he change the paper other than firing massive amounts of people? Does he make a big public show of how the DP has become trash and that he buys it to restore it to its prior integrity? Sure he bans Luthor-based stories (unknown to the public) but does he otherwise promote truth and justice? That would make sense to me.

However, we got absolutely NO ANSWERS to ANYTHING.

Now, with the way the show treats the paper and how easy it is to get hired and without really knowing how the public feels about the entire affair, its basically exudes the gravity of the Talon.

I think the first sign that the DP was corrupted was when Lionel got them to publish Chloe's article. A good paper would never allow something like that happen. You could also point to articles like Linda Lakes' Lex gossip article as a sign of the downfall.

I also think the fact TPTB rushed Chloe into the DP was a huge mistake, like Lois and Clark she didn't have a college education either when she got hired(she was in first semester at Met U). I guess Al/Miles felt that it would be "cool" to have Clark at the DP, but they could have easily had Chloe going to college, work for the school newpaper and have Clark go there when he needs help and nobody would have noticed any difference, but Al/Miles love there cheap gimmicks.

I disagree that they "rushed" Chloe. She didn't have a college degree, but she was in college; had been the editor of her high school newspaper for four years; had interned for the Daily Planet (which she earned on her own in the first season); and had professional writing credits (at least two articles for the Smallville Ledger). Plus we'd actually heard her express many times that she wanted to write for the Planet. For Clark, this comes out of nowhere-- he hasn't mentioned an interest in being a journalist since season 5's "Fade," when he dismissed the notion. And he has virtually no credentials.

I disagree. IMHO there was indeed a Luthor Influence with the DP board of Directors, who' hire-up then the Editor in Chief, however the DP was not corrupt IMHO.


I disagree with this also. Lois and Clark rushed in getting a Job at the DP. Chloe hasn't rushed. She applied for an Internship which is a part of school. I've researched this, many Colleges within the US allowed Freshmen to intern at a Newspaper in the area for College credit/ credit towards their degree. (in fact it's a requirement for the major)
http://www.hamptonu.edu/shsjc/students/internships.htm

http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/employm...e.aspx?id=69979


In Season 1, she was accepted into a special Internship after the DP read her story about her abduction at the Smallville Ledger, they were so impressed with her writing that they gave her the Summer Internship. So I really don't see how TPTB rushed Chloe into the DP.



TPTB already stated they were sick of the School setting, so it was obvious a school newspaper was out of a question. They wanted her at the DP, and unlike Clark/Lois she didn't join in the first two episodes. It was more like the 4th or 5th into the season, so it wasn't as if she was there 123.

Corruption is defined as
1 impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle
2 a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

This was not the case in S1-S6. Now I agree that the Luthors had influence at the DP, as they do elsewhere, but remind you, the DP still had standards, Chloe had to submit her articles on time, and keep her grammar, and dress professionally. She continued to work hard, and they expected only the best from her.

In season 6, Lex got Jimmy fired, yet they only demoted him (he was able to get his job back... so it was indeed a demotion when all said and done) So clearly the DP was not corrupt for if it was, Jimmy wouldn't be there.

In season 7, we see the DP moving away from it's standards to write stories that would sale papers. "Sex, Scandal, and Death " like stories, regardless if true or not, just as long as there are pictures to back it up gets it printed. The standards of the DP collapsed in S7 and then we saw the corporation buy the paper, firing it's staff, bringing it from it's one status.

Lionel pulled strings to get Chloe a DP teen column. The DP was not corrupt. Probably he knew someone that owed him a favor. It's similar to when Lex pulled strings to get Nois into Met U, imo.

Linda Lake's column was a gossip column/entertainment column. Every newspaper has those.

Well she got an internship there which is very different from getting a job and more believable.

The college newspaper idea might have worked on a show that bothered to recognize real life struggles or using recurring characters but we don't have that; we have Smallville. But I wouldn't say it was "rushed" necessarily.

At least Chloe getting into the DP was presented as a lifelong dream and there was an entire episode devoted to her getting into it. The bookends and "plot" of Thirst was legitimately based around her getting hired by the Daily Planet. It was the core around which that episode turned. That is significantly different from "Hey, want a job?" "Sure" and the, what I'm sure will seem like an afterthought in the season premiere, entrance of Clark Kent.

On the front page though?



May I point out again Linda Lake's front page Lex/Lana/Clark Expose, I think that fills the "scandal" requirement and to my knowledge Grant wasn't the publisher then. If I am correct as well didn't they also do a front page article on the story Lois broke about Green Arrow? If Green Arrow is considered worthy of Inquisitor, then why is DP even touching it.



Sure it's more believable, but it seemed like 3-4 episode later she has a job there(not just an internship). If it was an internship the entire 2 1/2 years she was there then I have no problem, but fact is like Clark and Lois she doesn't have a college degree, and lets face it, although they are pointing out she is taking night classes how does she even have time to take more then 1 or 2 a week with everything else she does.



I think all characters should have went to College on the show. How much more entertaining it could have been to have Clark in College then sitting in his barn all of season 6. Like i said to me Chloe at the DP came off like a gimmick with TPTB saying hey look Clark is at the DP, they could have put her at a school newpaper, library, room with a computer, etc and I don't think it would have made much difference to the overall plot.

I always thought Clark dropping out of college was stupid. I understand he thought he was needed at the farm because of his dad. But you would think at some point he would go back to college but no because it's part of the mythos TDATB decide to shoehorn Clark into the Planet even worse than Lois was. The more I think about it the more I feel the show just needs a giant revamp

The GA article and any news regarding the GA is newsworthy. Just like the Angel of Vengeance article was newsworthy. I don't think anyone would argue that it wasn't DP material. The difference between the GA article being on the DP and the Inquisitor is not that the stories have to be different, it's just that in the Inquisitor the editor did not care about Truth or proof or anything like that. Lois says that her editor decided to go with an alien angle for the Barn-door article for example without any proof or substantiation. The same thing with the GA article that Lois had, she lied that she was kidnapped by the GA in her article and we all know that is not what happened. The difference IMO, is the information and how true the information is. The Inquisitor just wants to sell papers, the DP was out to print the truth.

IMO, her hiring at the DP seemed very well done and not rushed at all. In fact, I know people who started working at a company as interns in their freshman year and because they did a good job, the company choose to retain them and finally made them full-time employees. It happens in real-life, especially if the person is really good at what they do. Chloe has been called brainy, a nerd, smart and so on throught out the show. She landed an internship that was highly competitive while she was still a high-school student. The DP only hired four people (if I recall correctly) for this internship and she landed it because her "work spoke for itself".

IMO, Chloe applied for an internship, sent her resume, went in for an interview and was able to prove to Khan that she could handle the job. Even when Lionel pulled strings to get her a column at the DP, she must have done great at it because she was not fired due to anything work-related. Instead she got blacklisted because of the same Lionel. What I actually love most about Khan is that she gave Chloe a hard time and Chloe answered one of the questions almost every interviewer asks: "Why do you want to work for our company?" I think that episode really set the standard of the DP to a high level, I actually respected the paper at the time.

As for Chloe being able to take classes. IMO I do not see it being that tough. I have a normal 9-5 pm job and I am also a full-time student taking classes on three days a week, two weekday evenings and then all day saturday. Chloe has a lot on her plate, whenever we are watching the show, but that is only one day in a week, we don't know what she is doing the rest of the week. For instance when they were looking for Brainiac, we know days went by before they were able to track him down, she hacked into computers and so on, and that can't take all that much time, IMO.


But Clark was not at the DP. Clark is only joining now.

IA! I hate that only Chloe is suppossedly still taking classes at MetU. Why did all the ICONIC! characters have to drop out of school in one way or the other? Lana dropped out of MetU suppossedly because of Dark Thursday never to return. Lois kicked out because of drinking. Clark dropped out because of his dad never to return. It's just disturbing to say the least.


WORD times 1000000. I couldn't agree more.

I agree on the silliness of that one. But I didn't feel what happened in that episode was necessarily an indication of the quality of the DP as a whole at the time. It was basically a way for them to get Tori Spelling on the show, and put her character in a position of power, while also dragging Clana back from the dead again.



If some guy is running around town robbing some of the city's wealthiest and most influential citizens, that's legitimate news. And I wouldn't expect the DP not to write about it just because the guy committing the crimes was wearing a funny outfit.

Still every episode Clark can run to the DP to see Chloe, that's the gimmick. Al/Miles thought it would be cool to have that as a backdrop for Clark because hey Superman/Clark works there in the future, so let's find a way to get him there now(season 5) without him actually working there.



Still if you are going to point out issues with the show(or the DP in this case), then that being a cover should be considered canon of how the DP was run at that point(ie gossip first page). We can safely not blame Grant for that and therefore he is not the downfall of the DP, it was already becoming a rag as of Hydro(if not earlier depending on your point of view).



I always found it funny that she wrote an article about Vampires to get in, talk about tabloidish stuff. Hell alot of her articles the first 4 seasons would be tabloidish. The Wall of Wierd was 1 huge thing ment for a tabloid, her articles when she were a kid screamed tabloidy(Progeny). Chloe having a running interest in the paranormal seems to be a reacurring theme throughout the show for her character, which is sort of fitting when you consider her career path season 8.



Well let's see she works 40 hours a week, has to commute at least 3 hours a day(if not more) and helps Clark all the time. I just assumes she is on the 20 year plan of getting her degree else it becomes a bit unbelievable that she can juggle all that. I am guessing we won't ever hear anything this season(or next if it goes to a season 9) about her actually graduating.

That story was not tabloidish. It was about an actual disease that had infected several people. Several other people had died because of it. The fact that the disease mimicked vampirism didn't make it less newsworthy. Yes, some of the details were sort of fantastical (Buffy the vampire), but they were the facts, and could be backed up with actual proof.

Dark Thursday was a pretty fantastical series of events, right out of a sci fi novel. Does that mean the DP shouldn't have reported on it?



Chloe investigated and reported on things that actually happened. Meteor freaks were real. Some of them were killing people. These things were really going on. Some of it was pretty weird, sure. But just because something is weird doesn't mean it isn't legitimate news.

"Waitress has Dracula's Love Child." That's tabloidish. "I was kidnapped by the Green Arrow...even though I really wasn't, but it makes the story more interesting." That's tabloidish. A story about a guy who kills by stealing other peoples' body heat might sound pretty farfetched. But, if you can prove it really happened, it's legitimate news.

deleted

How is this tabloidish? Just because a story seems unbelievable doesn't make it tabloidish. In the future, Iconic Lois Lane and Clark Kent will be writing about a man that can fly, shoot fire from his eyes, with superspeed, superstrength and so on. Does that make it tabloidish? In the real world, yeah, but in this universe? The SV-Universe? The Superman Universe? It's newsworthy material that should be reported on as long as it can be backed up with proof, eyewitness accounts and so on.

Chloe's article in Thirst was a legitimate story. A story well researched, a story that was true with real-hard proof. But even with all the proof and evidence that Chloe had, Khan still did not print that story because as she said it seems pretty sensational given the headline.

The MF-stories were also all true. Lana would probably be thankful that someone printed and warned people about the Meteor Infected that went psycho and tried to kill her after stalking her. Those were legitimate newsworthy stories. Chloe learnt over the years not to print anything without hard proof. She learnt it from the high-school principal, she learnt it from Khan, she learnt it while working at the Torch and she learnt it at the DP. IMO, just because a story seems very strange to us, doesn't mean it's not news. It depends with how the news are reported.

Exactly. It's all about the facts, the proof, the evidence. At the DP, one couldn't print without backing up with hard proof.


YMMV of course, but it doesn't seem that unbelievable to me. The driving back and forth to Metropolis is stupid definitely, but that applies to all the characters in this show--- Chloe, Lois, Jimmy who tend to live in Smallville yet they all work in Metropolis. But we do not know whether she works 40 hours a week, we do not know whether she's always helping Clark. All we know is that she is there to help Clark with whatver problem they are having in the day we are watching her. The rest of the week, we don't really know what she's doing. For example, I am sure that Clark works on the farm, but we never see him on the farm working. Are we to assume that he never does that? Lex used to manage LuthorCorp, the DP, and so on, yet he lived in Smallville and most of the times we saw him at the mansion. I can believe that Chloe can manage to take classes full time and work full time. I do it, although I do not have to drive three hours to work and back (which I wish they would address on the show and admit that Metropolis is only a few minutes drive from Smallville seeing that everyone seems to take two seconds to drive from one point to the other.) Another possibility could be that she is getting credits for her internship/work at the DP (Most schools award credits for internships) and therefore taking classes only part-time. JMHO, YMMV of course.

What career path is that?

It wasn't a front-page "expose." It was the front page of the B section, not the front page, and it was a gossip column. Here's the cap. Notice the horoscopes running down the side of the page. The dialogue also makes this very clear, as if emphasizing the difference between real news and gossip:





The dialogue in "Thirst" brings up this point to dismiss it:



It's a real disease. Also, if you look at the cap of her article, it refers to the break Metropolis cops have finally gotten in a long string of missing persons cases. That is certainly news.



Not at all. She found out the truth about something that no one else seems to have realized (that the meteor rocks mutate people and give them strange powers) and tried to let people know about it. At least two of these stories got her professional bylines (in "Leech," for example, her story about "Superboy" got her published in the Smallville Ledger).



I agree. I think it would have worked a lot better for Clark to be taking journalism classes last year and begin to fall in love with writing, rather than just abruptly toss him into the Planet. It made sense for him to drop out of school for a semester after his father died (it's an understandable reaction to grief), but after that they should have showed him getting his act together, sucking it up, and going back to school. It would have made his character seem a little tougher, and it would have given them a basis for him getting into the Planet now. Likewise, I could better buy EDLois as a reporter if she'd been taking night classes all this time and trying to improve her writing.

Mythos,

Linda Lake wrote front page of the B section. "I only print the truth, and that is why it's on the front page of section B every week."

Chloe's article is actually about a Disease that causes Vampire-ish behavior in this Sorority. And it isn't Tabloid stuff, considering Chloe had hard core facts to back it up.



Again, it was the front page of the B section, not the actual Front Page,


Considering Linda Lake didn't post in the front page of the A section, I think the blame still falls to Grant.

So because Chloe works hard, we should think her being at the DP is rushed.

She Helps Clark during the 40 hours a week, so that time coincides don't it? We know she takes night Classes, so it's believable that she's working during the day and school at night. Just the 3 hour commute is bs but that's with every character, so I guess they are saying it's 3 hours both ways.

As for her graduating. At least Chloe is still in College for god's sake.

But when exactly did her job at the DP turn from a internship to a full time job? Once it's a paying job she doesn't get any credits, beyond that once it's a paying job it means that she got hired(like Lois and Clark) without a college degree.



It's still front page, if you think it's OK for gossip to be front page section B news then I guess that's your opinion.



From exposing Meteor freaks to protecting them



I guess we will find out by the end of this season if she graduates in the standard 4 years time, or if my theory of her being on the 20 year plan is more realistic. ;)

Have we actually seen Chloe do anything resembling being at school since season 5?

It's the Life section, which has little to do with real news in most papers. Most papers dedicate that section to celebrities, movies, and television. It's hardly the same as printing it on the front page of the paper, where the real news belongs.



Why does it matter if she graduates in four years or not? We have a canon statement that she was in night school. I doubt that means that she's carrying a full class load, but that doesn't seem to me to matter. The point is that she's pursuing her education and working. I really wish we'd seen Clark do likewise. I've never cared for the dismissive attitude this show has toward farming, and unlike the show, I realize it's a difficult and time-consuming job to run a farm-- but with his superspeed, Clark should have been able to fit in one or two classes easily enough. I think it's unfortunate that they didn't bother to build toward Clark's eventual destiny by the simple expedient of having him take a journalism class.

About the college thing, I agree with you guys. It's asinine to not have these characters in college, especially when 3 of the 4 are involved in journalism, which is something that you must have a degree for these days. You don't have to give them a college-related plot to have them be in school or even have any college-related sets. You can solve it with a bit of exposition and showing one of them doing homework or studying for a final every once and a while. Make a bookbag and a few textbooks a permanent fixture of the barn.

I think that a college-related plot, though, would be a hell of a lot better than fake baby, the tear of suck, or real shot clana.

AlMiles said at some point (I think it was on a season 5 DVD commentary) that college was boring, only interesting if your professor turned out to be Brainiac. But I disagree. Like Smallville High, college would have only been a backdrop for the major happenings of the show. I would have preferred that the characters stay in college, because it would make more sense now, and because seeing Clark at college would have been preferable to constantly seeing him mope in the loft, IMHO. I think showing him deciding to get back to school would have made him seem more proactive, and make his upcoming change in careers a lot more believable.

Except, the story didn't seem to focus on the disease. The title of the article has the word "vampire" in it and the entire first paragraph of Chloe's article talks about the history of vampires, yet Chloe actually tells Kahn that her story is not about vampires in the mythical sense. The word disease wasn't even mentioned or hinted at in the first paragraph. What reporter would spend their entire first paragraph on something that their article was not about? So while Chloe had actual facts, she certainly concentrated more on the vampire angle rather than the disease one, IMO, which is why Kahn trashed her article.



But here's my problem with this. Chloe already has a job at the DP so what exactly is the point of her getting a college degree? What else would Chloe be able to get if she actually had a degree? She can get promoted at the DP without one. That's why I don't agree with the fact that Chloe taking night classes to get a degree is that significant in terms of canon. If TPTB made it clear that she cannot move up at the DP until she gets her degree or that her taking night classes was the only reason why she was employed at the DP, that would be a different story. But that's just not the case, IMO. I agree that in real life, education is important but I can't carry that over and apply it to the show when the show hasn't stressed it. YMMV.

Guys, if you want to have a thread dedicated to the Daily Planet, that's fine. But having another Chloe Vs. Lois thread isn't, if the same arguments are going to be made every time. More in the mod thread here.

I agree with this, when the show in general has put so little emphasis for all characters about education, then it's either something you ignore for all characters and just live with the story they are telling or call out all characters for it. Personally I think it was a big mistake but learned to live with it.

Aww man. I just had a whole response ready.

Anyway, Kahn didn't say the article was trash. She said Chloe's writing showed she wasn't without talent. The only problem Kahn had was most likely the style of the article. Newspapers have a more formal style as oppose to what I feel is a magazine's informal style. In newspapers, from the first lead paragraph to the end, it's about the important facts of the story. Magazines allow you a more creative take to a story. It's the reason why I want to go into the magazine publishing. I like that style as oppose to newspaper.

Chloe's lead probably lended itself to making the rest flow like straight out of the tabloids. It's why my teachers always told me my lead needed to be perfect. People judge off the first paragraph whether the article is worth the read. If it's not, you failed.



Not necessarily. The show doesn't say anything but one could argue she was hired by the DP on the terms she would complete her college degree. As long as she kept going to school and eventually graduate, the DP would allow her to work there. It could also have been an condition that she would remain in the basement until she got her degree in order for people not to cry foul otherwise.

Of course, that's just placing supposition on what little we know.

Contacts, experience, knowledge, academia, meeting new people, resume builder, in case the DP thing doesn't work out, different ways of looking at life/the world, getting promoted past where she is right now. Plenty of people work during college, and some even work at darn good places, yet they still go to college to get the degree. Not everyone goes to college merely to have a piece of paper to enhance their job opportunities and even if Chloe was like that, it's still kind of important to have.

Why couldn't it be a paid internship?

(emphasis mine) My brother was out of school and fully into his career when he decidec to go back and get his masters. He kept working and took classes at nights and on the weekends. He had no intention of leaving his job, but he did that because he knew that if he had a masters degree he would be more likely to get a promotion.

There's also the point that Chloe may realize there's more she needs to learn. Things like ethics in journalism, journalism and the law, etc. It might be that she doesn't want to learn these things through trial and error.


ETA: To respond to this
It's certainly a sign that at least one higher up at the DP was corrupt or at least easily blackmailed. What I think argues against the DP as a corrupt institution at that time is how the other reporters and editors responded to Chloe's hiring, or to be more exact, her firing. They celebrated. They had cake. They saw her column for what it was, a rich man pulling strings for an underqualified teenager. They were happy to have that taint off their newspaper.

So, yes, there may have been some corruption at the DP back then, but the institution at its core was not corrupt.

It'll be interesting to see if the other reporters have any reaction to Clark's hiring. Will they shun him the way they shunned Chloe when she unfairly got her column? Will they make him prove himself the way Kahn made Chloe prove herself? Will there be any sign that the journalists care about the paper they work at and want it to maintain its reputation?

That I think is more detrimental to the Daily Planet. Not the corruption that might be there, but the fact that no one seems to care that the papers' reputation is sinking.

Moved to the Chloe thread.

I disagree with that, primarily because we had a chance to see Chloe get hired onscreen where if college was an issue, it would've been mentioned, IMO.

Because if there's one thing this show is good at doing, it's going over details.

Besides, that was one of a myriad of explanations as to why college.

No to mention that the first thing Lex did was fire old guard journalists if the paper was already corrupt he wouldn't need that au contraire all those reporters could had worked for him to further his agenda. Chloe said it herself Lex only left the easily controled.

Nois and Jimmy never had a problem with Lex because IMO he though that they will be easily controled and they are since Jimmy made a deal with Lex the moment he had problems and Nois banged her boss without even suspecting who he was.

Lex of course though the same about Chloe but once he realized that she was working with his father behind his back he realized that she was not them so needed to get out and hence firing her. Now the reason why Clark enters are a mistery for now.

I can't even think about the Daily Planet as a place or a publication. The Daily Planet is suppose to be about bettering society. That just hasn't happened. This paper has never done anything to better society, but Chloe has when she fought Luthor back, Clark has acting to help others.

I honestly think that Clark and Chloe usurped the Daily Planet in the truth and justice department ages ago. It's not about the building, but the result. YMMV.

To me, the DP is supposed to be the height of journalism. The best, most respected news source on the planet. It's supposed to be about truth, and integrity, and getting the really big, really important stories other papers can't. And that's what it was, according to the show, until Grant came along.

The whole point of Grant (before the whole clone business was revealed) was that he was the exact opposite of what the DP was supposed to stand for up to that point. They had him say and do things designed to drive that point home to the audience. "The Planet was a paper with high standards. Grant wants to cheapen and sensationalize it."

When Lex bought the place, they made a point of letting us know that Lex was firing the "old guard" (folks no doubt all about journalistic ethics) and replacing them with with more pliable writers who, it's implied, wouldn't be as concerned with morals, excellence. People who would write what they were told to write, the truth be darned.

So I think the writers have definitely been sticking to the idea that, until season 7, the SV DP was the place of high standards and high ideals it's been portrayed as in other versions of the story.

ITA with pretty much your entire post, Bitterswete.

One of the fascinating things about this show is the idea of corruption seeping into structures and the grayness in it. The Luthors are an insidious force, both forcing and exploiting any sort of corruption anywhere. Lionel used corrupt doctors, reporters, and cops, blackmailed honest ones into corruption, and blacklisted those who wouldn't go along with him. He- and later Lex- found the chinks in the system and either wormed his way into them or yanked open gaping holes. The Smallville mayor was completely corrupt and a Smallville sheriff folded under Lionel's pressure, as did, I expect, an editor at the DP back in S2-3. And it's fascinating, to me, to see how that's expanded over the course of the series to full-on corruption in the DP. I mean, I seriously doubt we're supposed to see the entirety of the Smallville government as corrupt after season two, or the entirety of the sheriff's department as corrupt. I feel the same way about the DP. Members were corrupt, had been influenced by Lionel who knows how, but the institution remained mostly sound until recently, when it came under Lex's full control.

I personally doubt it, considering the fact that apparently Lex was firing those who would have had issue with him. I think we're going to see things as on the surface fine and dandy.

I still think that Lex kept Chloe on at the DP not because he could control her, but because he could use her (as he did [almost] to his benefit in "Stride" by stealing her files and blackmailing Pete). It seems to me he fired her on a whim, out of anger. After killing his father, he wasn't so much with the controlled actions, IMO.

And that we never got any reaction to anything from anyone in the DP staff except "is that an eclipse?"

I know this is nitpicking, but it hurts my eyes that a thread about the Daily Planet, bastion of journalism, has such a messy thread title.

Can we change it to: "The Daily Planet: Now Hiring - No Experience Required!"

Hehe, maybe we should correct the punctuation when the DP is returned to a bastion of journalism and is no longer owned by the Luthors. It'll be symbolic.

Don't forget the confused, big-eyed stares around the room when all the computers crashed in "Stride."