LITTLE ROCK — Sarah Tressler should have known you can’t have a secret life if you’re a reporter.
Tressler is the Houston Chronicle society reporter who was fired last week for moonlighting as a stripper. She even wrote a blog “Diary of an Angry Stripper” about her adventures, but never told her bosses at the Chronicle about her eight-year career at gentlemen clubs.
“The idea of somebody outing me seemed like it would be like such a mean thing to do that I never thought anybody would do it,” Tressler told ABC News. “I guess I was wrong.”
Journalism is a back-stabbing business.
It was the rival Houston Press that first reported the story about Tressler. Society reporters — and I was one for a five-month period that felt much longer — attend glitzy parties and weddings with the movers and shakers. After all, in the South, the society section is often the first, and most read, section of the newspaper with some of the highest ad revenue returns. Did Tressler not think that someone she interviewed or other reporters might show up at the strip clubs?
During my time in the society section of the local paper, I mixed drinks at private parties. I attended bartending school for the exact reason Tressler stripped — money.
My editors approved of me attending bartending school. They even accommodated my schedule. My explanation: I wanted to learn to mix Manhattans and martinis. I even wrote a story about it for the paper. They did not know that I secretly bartended at parties on weekends attended by some of the very people I covered. I didn’t think it was any of their business what I did on my free time, and they never found out.
Tressler blogged on Monday, “I’ve heard a lot of people wondering why this is even considered a story, and I was having trouble coming up with the reason myself. If I was a fry cook at Waffle House on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, would the Houston Press have felt the need to report it?”
It’s unclear if the editors at the Chronicle fired Tressler because she had another undisclosed job or if she was fired because she stripped. The Chronicle isn’t commenting. The editors very likely wish Tressler would go away, but she probably isn’t.
According to various accounts, Tressler holds a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. She became a full-time staffer at the newspaper in January after working as a freelancer. Matthew Fleischer, who once worked with Tressler in Los Angeles, wrote in Mediabistro’s “Fishbowl LA” column that she is likely to get a book deal out of the saga.
Tressler has taken down most of her stripper posts — a sign that she will use those in an upcoming book deal. Why let people read for free, right?
Another Chronicle society writer, Douglas Britt, who was fired in late 2011, chimed in on the Tressler matter on Monday. Britt was fired after the “Houston Press” wrote about Britt’s “long video rants about how he's planning to take what might be a meth-fueled road trip, and about his days as an escort, showing off his S&M bruises…” (What is going on with the hiring process at that newspaper?)
Britt wrote on his blog, “the way the story’s playing presents her with a golden opportunity …[and] ‘shut up on the web’ would be precisely the wrong life lesson to draw from this. A better one: Grow up, everybody. Talk about the sanctity of journalism is cheap coming from an outlet that rarely commits it.”
If anything, Tressler’s firing certainly makes one closely examine the Chronicle’s Web site. On Monday, the site featured a photo essay on “Japan Festival 2012,” a yearly event in Houston. A few of the pictures showed scantily clad women dressed like anime characters.
A sultry picture of singer Taylor Swift anchored the site with the photo caption: “Carrie Underwood rocked a thigh-high slit; big winner Taylor Swift also shone on the red carpet.”
Sex sells. The Chronicle knows this. So does Tressler.
Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based journalist. Follow her on Twitter at @SuziParker.
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