-30-

Art by Stephen B. Whatley

Decades of journalism had taken their toll on Clark Kent. He’d covered every epic news event throughout his career. He reported live from the jungles of Vietnam, and watched as Falkland Islands burned.  He was on-site when Iraqi tanks rolled onto Kuwaiti sand, and reported live when General Zod’s clone army from the Phantom Zone attacked Earth. For thirty years, Clark had pledged himself to the pursuit of objective journalism and unbiased coverage. In return, he had received a massive ulcer and a crumbling 401k retirement fund. He had survived countless hostile takeover attempts by supervillians. But could he now survive a hostile corporate takeover?

At The Daily Planet, Clark didn’t need super powers to realize something was amiss. The complimentary donuts and coffee were nowhere to be seen. How were the reporters to survive the editorial meeting without a caffeinated high?

Perry White, the paper’s editor in chief, waved his hand at the empty space in the center of the table. “Cutbacks, the first of many,” he declared. “We’re dying, people. Hack bloggers beat us to every headline. Craigslist has decimated our ad revenue. Print’s irrelevant thanks to Google News and their ilk.” White leaned back in his chair, stubbed out his cigar. “That’s why management has decided to sell the paper to LexCorp.”

Stunned silence. The missing doughnuts and coffee were instantly forgotten.

Lois Lane slammed her fist against the table. “You’ve sold us out!”

“It had to be done,” Perry said. “Readership’s down and we’re running deep in the red. People aren’t looking for investigative reporting anymore. They want to know which celebrities are in rehab, which ones are packing on the pounds and which ones are purging. That’s the kind of news Metropolis can’t get enough of.”

Lois refused to relent. “We can’t give in like this. Look at what happened to Gotham’s paper. It used to be a leading standard. Now they’re just reprinting press releases and calling it ‘reporting’. We can’t let Lex Luthor win like this!”

Perry stared out the window, lit up another cigar. “Don’t you get it, Lois? He already has. The papers were signed this morning. We are now officially part of the LexCorp family.”

In the distance, Clark heard a 747 plummet toward the earth. He quietly excused himself from the meeting. In the hallway, he ripped open his shirt and changed into his costume. He flew out of the building, into the upper atmosphere, and rescued the plane before it crashed into a local sports stadium.

Deep in thought, Clark returned the plane safely to the ground. He didn’t understand Lois’s outrage at the meeting. Sure, Luthor was evil, he knew that. But how was his takeover of The Daily Planet a bad thing? Hadn’t Luthor just saved the paper from bankruptcy? Perhaps everyone was over-reacting.

Clark flew back to the office, changed into his regular clothes. Inside the office, the editorial meeting had broken up. Only Jimmy Olson remained. The young photographer clicked away at his computer.

“Hey Jimmy,” Clark said. “I heard Superman just saved a plane from crashing!”

Jimmy didn’t look up. “I know. Had a Google news alert about it a few minutes ago.”

“Shouldn’t we get out there and interview the survivors?”

“Why bother? Some blogger already covered it.”

Clark frowned. “Don’t you want to at least snap some pics for tomorrow’s front page?”

Jimmy turned his computer screen towards Clark. Centered on it was a large photo of the survivors exiting the plane. “The blogger also had a digital Nikon. No one wants to read yesterday’s news tomorrow.”

Creeping dread descended upon Clark. He was faster than a speeding bullet. But, he realized, he was no match for the Internet.

* * *

Perry White was the first to be fired from The Daily Planet after the take-over.

It was part of the corporate restructuring strategy, the new management claimed. The recession’s upon us, we’ve got to do more with less. They swore it had nothing to do with the editorial Perry wrote about Lex Luthor, said it was in no way related to his negative comments about Luthor’s quest to become mayor of Metropolis. Perry’s departure was strictly business, the new management said as they smiled broadly. Just business.

“We’re next,” Lois muttered at the next editorial meeting, tapping her pencil against the table.

“Why do you say that?” Clark asked.

She snapped the pencil in half. “Because reporting the truth is no longer profitable.”

The buyouts were announced later in the week. In a cost-cutting coup de grâce, the new management offered paltry severance payments to any of the old-timers who would accept early retirement. It was purely optional, they said, but emphasized that those reporting current affairs should give extra consideration to it.

Clark, Lois, and Jimmy went for a drink-and-bitch session after work. Lois and Jimmy were sloshed within the hour, while Clark remained cold sober. The alcohol could not conquer his super liver.

“What about the Coast City News?” Jimmy wondered aloud. “We could find new jobs there.”

Lois held her head up with her hands. “Owned by LexCorp as well. Cutbacks are going on there too.” She threw back another shot of tequila. “I’m going to take the buyout. Maybe switch to marketing, write up cute advertisements for crap nobody needs. At least I can afford to put food on the table with that. Hell, I’ll even be able to afford a table.”

“But Lois, you can’t give up so easily!” Clark said.

“This ship’s sinking,” Jimmy said. “I heard that they’re outsourcing the copy editors to India. India!”

“We’ll be a country with the exact same opinion in every newspaper soon,” Lois said. “Have you considered wedding photography, Jimmy?”

Clark stood up in disgust, resisted the urge to flash-fry the entire bar with his heat ray vision. “What about all that we’ve fought for all of this time? Truth? Justice? The American way?”

Jimmy placed a sympathetic hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Bought out by the corp, along with the rest of our cred.”

* * *

The newsroom was quickly depleted of experienced journalists, soon replaced with twentysomething interns. Dust gathered on Lois and Jimmy’s desks, their files went unused. Their names faded from the bylines of The Daily Planet.

Clark struggled to understand the new dialect of the twentysomethings. Twitter. Ajax. RSS. Wiki. He hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. The twentysomethings looked at him with pity, especially when he brought up certain topics. Research and analysis caused pained expressions on the faces of the interns. Fact-checking was an anachronism to them.

They whispered and giggled about him behind his back. Called him Stegosaurus. It was only a matter of time before he became extinct, before the meteorite of technology wiped him off the face of the copy desk. Clark heard every muted jibe, every muttered insult. He cursed his super hearing.

At the next editorial meeting, Clark proposed they investigate the allegation that recently-elected Mayor Lex Luther siphoned money out of the city treasury. Rumour had it that Luthor planned to use the money to build a weapon to destroy the moon.

“Didn’t you read Luthor’s press release?” one of the interns asked. “He’s already said he had nothing to do with the missing money.”

Clark zapped him with x-ray vision and hoped that it would give the mouthy intern cancer. “Yes, but read between the lines. What doesn’t the press release say? Notice how he doesn’t mention anything about his supersonic weapon research program? Or the host of killer robots that he hired to guard city hall? We need to dig deeper here.”

The paper’s new editor shook his head. “Our surveys show that readers aren’t interested in boring politics anymore. They yearn for bleeding-edge entertainment news. That’s why we need you to cover the final results of this week’s American Idol.”

Clark heard gunshots from a bank robbery in progress several blocks away. He ignored it. “Are… are you trying to tell me that I’m…”

The editor nodded. “Reassigned to the entertainment section, which is now on our front page. Congratulations, Clark! Welcome to your new career.”

* * *

The depression brought on by the reassignment was too much for the man of steel to bear. He tried drinking himself asleep to no avail. He tried to forget his troubles with a small pile of uppers and downers bought from a nearby dealer, but his super metabolism quashed the drugs before the side effects kicked in.

Desperate, he opened the lead-lined safe hidden in his apartment. He took out a few of the small glowing rocks, carried them into his kitchen then placed them on a small mirror. He cut the kryptonite into several powdered lines with a small razor blade, and quickly snorted each line in rapid succession.

He was high, higher than any time he had ever flown. Clark went club hopping and danced the night away. He snorted more kryptonite off of countless toilet seats in numerous club washrooms, and accidentally ripped the arm off of a bouncer that tried to kick him out of one club. At some point in the night, he dropped and lost his thick-rimmed glasses.

Shortly before dawn, Clark stumbled to Lois’s apartment. He pounded on her door until she woke up and answered.

“Christ. Clark, you’re a mess.”

Clark rubbed his nose, snorted. “Entertainment news, Lois. They have me covering entertainment news!”

“We tried to warn you,” she said. “Adapt or die, Clark. It’s as simple as that.” Lois moved to close her front door, but paused. “You know, without your glasses, you kind of look like Superman. And look at him. He can spin the earth backwards, but he still wouldn’t be able to change the way the world’s turning. Go home, Clark.”

Lois shut the door. Clark slumped against the wall outside as morning dawn broke.

* * *

Inside the American Idol green room, Clark waited patiently for his interview with the show’s host. Restless, he flipped through the channels on the room’s TV, stopped on one of the LexCorp news channels.

Footage was shown of the moon as it was blown up by a sonic weapon. The footage cut to a press conference held by Lex Luthor. The bald mayor denied all responsibility for the events, claimed that it was just coincidence that he had recently developed a weapon similar to the one that pulverized the moon. The scene cut to the small audience of carefully selected reporters. They smiled, nodded in agreement with Lex, and obediently wrote down what he told them. The show cut back to the news anchor, who introduced the night’s feature news item: an investigative report on a bleach blonde celebrity’s recent jail house stint.

There was more to come after the break, the news anchor promised. Much, much more.

Superman characters are copyright and trademarked by DC Comics.
-30- story by Sean Casey.
Photo by Stephen B Whatley