C Nikolaus

Christina / Christoph Nikolaus

A slightly hyperactive blogger friend of Seamus', who is too close to the story

Gender: Female Current Quality: Good

In Game

Plots: Breaking Story, Political Money

Bluesheets:

Character Hint

You are Christina Nikolaus, an enthusiastic journalist and proponent of New Media. Yes, some people say that you are "just a blogger", but you're showing them that the real news, with modern progressive values, is all about online today.

Well -- maybe not today. Today is kind of horrible. Your friend Seamus told you to come by Decameron Enterprises this morning, saying that you'd find a hell of a story, but you weren't expecting to find everyone saying that he'd gone on some kind of gun-toting rampage. He's always struck you as a good guy, and you are sure that there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye...

Character Sheet

OMFG, what happened? No WAY did Seamus do what everyone is saying he did today.

Okay. Gotta cover all the bases so you can get the story right. There's so much going on here and so many ways the media can get it wrong. Events like this are where Pulitzers come from.

Backstory. You grew up in central Connecticut, on the outskirts of Hartford. Humdrum, boring. In high school you fell into working on the school newspaper, and decided to go into Journalism at City University of Violet City (CUVC!). There you met Seamus O'Malley - you were dating his roommate at the time, and Seamus was maybe the only good thing to last in that relationship.

Seamus was always a little quiet, a little artistic. So when you were the Arts Correspondent junior year, he was the part of your social circle most willing to hang out with you when you had to go cover a student theater performance or a coffeehouse. As for anything more than that... well, he always seemed to be playing for the other team, more's the pity. But that all faded into a comfortable friendship.

When the two of you graduated, it seemed you both had the luck of the Irish (ha!) and landed great jobs. He started working in the R&D department of Decameron Enterprises, and you landed a great opportunity at the Violet City Standard. You've been writing and producing media journalism for the 'About Town' part of their online site. It's been hard work, but rewarding, having to shoot and edit video and audio and write copy and send it all off to an editor under tight deadlines. But you're young, and up for the challenge. You've got your coffee, your 5-hour energy shots, your shiny new Scion to wheel you around to wherever the story is, your MacBook Pro, and a strong sense of what journalism in the 21st century means.

Except.... well, no one else in the media seems to treat you like an equal. And it isn't your youth, either. It's professional scorn, nothing less, nothing more. They treat you like "just a blogger". A "real" journalist would write for the paper side of the house. Or would report on the news radio station. Hell, even the watered down, fact light, opinion heavy TV news people get more respect. Even that Vasily Leonard who is so full of crap. The stuff he pulls is -so- close to violating journalistic ethics it makes you sick. You and he have had it out a few times in the comment threads of the Fox website, only to see the thread get yanked down or to be shouted down by the usual crowd. Never read the comments.

Lately you've been assigned to the politics section of the Standard Online. With the upcoming election there's been more to cover and more interest from the public. In particular you've been writing what you think should be regarded as pretty impressive exposes about the outside money pouring in. Jeri Ferdinand has been getting the VC and Tech Giant contributions due to her support of Net Neutrality regulation and campaign to launch a Startup Incubator in the city, and she may be the cleanest candidate. Fred Ronit has been getting a lot of money from the NRA and the Tea Party because of his unabashed and totally out of touch support of every 2nd Amendment nutcase. And no one has quite yet figured out where Reagan Newbold is getting all of his money from. It's being funneled through the Modern American Freedom PAC, but the laws have gotten so good at shielding the donors to that. Some of it has to be coming from Big Corporations, Pharma, Oil, and whatnot, but he claims to not know. Not that that's stopping him from taking the money, of course. And your inability to track it back has left you looking like every other amateur blogger making vague speculations on the little facts available.

So naturally, when Seamus said he'd been working on a secret project, and that if you came by Decameron this morning you'd get the story of the decade, you were curious. He didn't want to divulge any details, only that Decameron had a new DoD contract and that what they were building was, and that you'd get the scoop if you came by. It wasn't much, but you knew he had no reason to lie. And if he was telling the truth... well, then this really -was- the chance to get the story before any one else, and prove that you could not only get the scoop, but report on it better than any of the 'traditional media elite'.

And then when you got there, just as people were running out of the building and the chaos was everywhere, you knew something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. Shortly thereafter the police showed up, and so did the rest of the media and every campaigning politician within a 30 mile radius it seems. Whatever Seamus was going to give you the exclusive on must've had some part in today's events, but how? Time to dust off those investigative journalism skills and get to the bottom of it all.

Who You Know

Seamus O'Malley: Your old friend from college, who was way too nice and earnest a guy to go postal like they're saying. He cared a lot about right and wrong, and would never have hurt innocents.
Jonathan Sheena: A journalism major over at Violet City University, who is apparently working as an intern in office management, of all things. It's a real shame: he's been puppy-dogging after you, commenting on your articles and generally sounding like he's got a good head for news. If he needed a summer job, he should have come talk to you -- the Standard surely could have gotten him some kind of internship.
On the plus side, he and Seamus apparently hooked up recently, and that's been good for both of them, so meeting at Decameron like this seems to have been a lucky coincidence. At least, lucky until today...
Paula Vasilios: One of Seamus' friends from work -- smart and intense, if a bit geeky in that programmer kind of way.
Jeri Ferdinand: The Mayor of Violet City, running for US Senate. As politicians go, she's one of the better ones, and you admire her history of radical action. (If not the rumors that she burned down a building at VCU. You may not like VCU very much, but that's a bit extreme.) Like all politicians, though, she tends to compromise her principles whenever they are politically inconvenient, and the mainstream media don't ever call her on it, so it mainly falls to you and the Standard to keep her feet to the fire, focused on progressive principles.
Simon Mercer: Ferdinand's campaign manager, a particularly sinister and shadowy figure who you've been having trouble getting concrete information about. All of which makes your antennae perk up nicely.
Reagan Newbold: The current Senator from Vermillion. A typical do-nothing Republican. 'Nuff said, but you really wonder where his money is coming from.
Nika Stanimir: Newbold's campaign manager, and the NRA's long-standing shill in Violet City. Seriously, it tells you so much about how out-of-touch Newbold is that he's let someone like that run the campaign...
Fred Ronit: A Tea Party crazy, who has been making trouble in the State Congress for years, and now wants to export that crazy to Washington. He is probably even worse than Newbold, if such a thing is possible. That said, some of your friends have been making noises about registering as Republicans just to vote for him, on the grounds that Vermillion isn't stupid enough to send him to the Senate.
Roger Forrester: One of the older "reporters" for CBS, who hides behind the antiquated and never-true notion of "journalistic objectivity" as a way to avoid speaking his mind. Seriously -- everyone has opinions, and one of the jobs of a journalist is to understand the story well enough to have an informed opinion, and communicate that to your audience. This mealy-mouthed notion of "objectivity" just burns your butt.
Vasily Leonard: The reminder that there are worse things than "objectivity", he is the party-line Fox reporter -- like all of them, he doesn't care about truth, just about the current marching orders from Rupert Murdoch. People like that should be drummed out of the news business, if not arrested for fraud. "Fair and balanced" your ass...
Regan Archie: A rich and famous lawyer who represents a lot of wealthy people and companies here in Violet City. She seems to be suspiciously good at making problems quietly go away, which almost certainly means she is bribing someone or someones. If she is involved with this, that might make things just a little more interesting.
Aidan O'Malley: Seamus' older brother, who you've heard is now a local priest.
Tagh O'Malley: Seamus' Dad, poor bastard. It was before your time, but Seamus has told you about how Vasily Leonard pretty much destroyed his life by airing lies, exaggerations and half-truths about him. Which is pretty much what you'd expect.
Brian Truman: One of those fat cats from Greyrock Investments, a big Vermillion venture and private-equity firm. Mayor Ferdinand has been taking them nicely to task: as far as you can tell, they are exactly the kind of one-percenter corporatists who are wrecking the economy by going for short-term profits instead of building healthy companies. Maybe you can get a juicy interview with him, and put the screws on?

GM Notes

Member of: Media