Believe it or not, in today’s media landscape there is legitimate way to create “fake news”, and recently I’ve been hired to do just that. No, I’m not talking about misleading the masses for nefarious purposes (unless you consider advertising nefarious). I’m talking about branded content for a black culture youtube channel called The Shade Room. The Shade Room Investigates (TSRI) is a popular online news show hosted by Justin Carter that tells stories of local controversies in the black community. The show has gained so much traction that film studios and streaming services are now partnering with The Shade Room to create ads integrating their IP with the news show, tasking me to write fictional news stories as if the content of the advertiser’s movie or show is currently happening in the real world. So far, I’ve written and edited episodes of TSR Investigates for the Netflix film They Cloned Tyrone, Sony’s Bad Boys 4, and recently Hulu’s second season of Reasonable Doubt. The results have been huge engagement with the fanbase, often delighting them that they’ve been duped for a short time into thinking the news story is actually real!
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