No Friends: The One about Rachel

Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, November 11th, 2015 - 21 comments
Categories: Media - Tags: , ,

News Flash! Just a couple of months after launching, it looks like MediaWorks’ entertainment website Scout may be flushed down the gutter. Stuff is reporting that self styled ‘queen of gossip’ Rachel Glucina has driven away the majority of the staff who began the project.

Apparently there was regular friction between Glucina and her minions.

“The way she talks is not okay – everyone got fed up,” claims the source in the Stuff article.

Staffing was always an issue. First out the door was news editor Francis Cook, who lasted just four days. Now it appears just one of the dozen content miners who started the project remains.

Right from the start, MediaWorks were actively canvassing for digital content writers, but as one media contact who went as far as an initial interview told me, once it was known that the gig was with Glucina, professional pride got in the way. There are some jobs even the most jaded hack won’t touch.

And what a job it is! Up in the early hours each day to get the latest stories from Hollywood, which are then redrafted to make them seem like original content. The rest of the day crawling through local news websites looking for anything vaguely GossTastic!

The site actually features bugger all Kiwi content, despite Rachel Glucina’s boast at the beginning that Scout would be a New Zealand version of American gossip sites like TMZ and the E! Channel. Is anyone interesting still taking Rachel’s calls?

Top local story this week? Tokoroa Man Dances with Jennifer Lopez.

Meh.

Scout’s social media numbers are appalling (a mere 1700 fb likes, just 325 followers on twitter). Having peaked in the first days with a rivetting story about Mike Hosking washing his car, there seems to be nothing left in the tank.

At the risk of wallowing in schadenfruede, I don’t regret seeing Rachel Glucina fail. Karma’s a sod and the person who re-victimised the young woman who was repeatedly assaulted by Prime Minister John Key might come out of this experience chastened and wiser. Possibly. Maybe. Well, probably not. Like Cameron Slater, who killed off NZ Truth in quick fashion, Rachel Glucina royally deserves to fail.

As former Truth chief reporter Jock Anderson put it:

“It’s cheap and nasty stuff, and I don’t think anyone is going to bother with it.”

Yep. And after just two months, it looks like MediaWorks now agree with Anderson.

The media company, who partnered with Glucina at the same time they got rid of real journalist John Campbell, are expected to announce Scout’s future later this week. The failure to attract an audience (and presumably the advertising money audiences generate), and ongoing competition from the Herald’s gossip website Spy probably spell the end for Scout.

Perhaps Rachel can return to PR or whatever it was she claimed to an expert in when she conned the Parnell waitress Amanda Bailey into telling her story.

Oscar Wilde reckoned we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Now it appears Rachel Glucina just has the gutter.

Lets hope she’s not flushed with failure.

 

 

 

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21 comments on “No Friends: The One about Rachel ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    11 November 2015 at 10:53 am

    Welcome back!

  2. shorts 2
    11 November 2015 at 11:12 am

    the site may have failed and the staff had a horrid learning experience but somehow I reckon Glucina will survive (and flourish) to tarnish other media outlets… she’s embodies all that is seen as worthy in our media… while scout and everything about it sucks the herald and stuff main sites aren’t that dissimilar in content and the herald has just lunch (?) spy…

  3. infused 3
    11 November 2015 at 11:15 am

    website like this won’t work in nz regardless. Anyway, there’s tmz.com and for a laugh, thesuperficial.com

  4. Lanthanide 4
    11 November 2015 at 11:32 am

    “Like Cameron Slater, who killed off NZ Truth in quick fashion”

    And got Freed aborted before it even saw the light.

  5. Vaughan Little 5
    11 November 2015 at 12:50 pm

    cause for hope, though it does bring to mind the massive problem of bullying in nz.

  6. Tiger Mountain 6
    11 November 2015 at 1:16 pm

    Scout looked doomed from first click, it was “hoovering” his Ferrari carpet with a Dustbuster mini vac on a Remuera st in public that got “Hosko” the front page

  7. Sirenia 7
    11 November 2015 at 2:02 pm

    I really dislike that sleazy Scout rubbish which begins the TV3 6pm news. It is so offensive to people who want to be treated as grownups and have some serious news. The last straw for my TV3 watching.

  8. gervaise ledger 8
    11 November 2015 at 10:26 pm

    Gutter type gossip journalism like this is old hat. Superseded by social media where everyone talks about themselves ad Infinitim there isn’t much interest in reading about anyone else. Plus that sniping gossip style is also old fashioned. People want to read uplifting stories about people not the back back stabby rubbish these old columns publish.

  9. miravox 9
    12 November 2015 at 12:33 am

    That Glucina can’t rustle up an audience in the most positive news to come out of NZ for awhile.

    • Muttonbird 9.1
      12 November 2015 at 1:34 am

      Yep. John Key has dropped her cold after the ponytail pulling incidents and subsequent correspondence and fall-out.

      Imagine the tidbits she could have had had she not screwed up.

      She will be bingeing on more ice-cream than usual right now. So sad.

      • Northsider 9.1.1
        12 November 2015 at 9:44 am

        Leave Ice Cream alone. I love it and can’t get enough of it.
        How dare you taint it by mentioning it in the same sentence as La Glucina.

  10. James Growley 10
    13 November 2015 at 3:02 pm

    ” digital content writers” isn’t that just another name for cut and paste?

    • te reo putake 10.1
      13 November 2015 at 3:07 pm

      Yep. As I understand it it’s just a matter of changing the sentence order, replacing Americanisms like color or theater with Kiwi compliant words and hey presto! a brand new Scout article is born.