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Humor

You Won’t Believe These Emails Sent to WFAA Management

We had to get to the bottom of how WFAA came to employ a journalist whose name feels extremely made up.
By Tim Rogers | |Shutterstock
Scoop Jefferson
Shutterstock

We recently became aware that a reporter employed by ABC Channel 8, perhaps better known locally by its call letters, WFAA, goes by the name Scoop Jefferson. This would be like if there were a Dallas city councilman named Chad West. The name feels extremely made up. If a screenwriter delivered a script for a movie about the Dallas Cowboys, and if the script included a plot point about Jerry Jones having sex with an American Airlines ticket counter agent in Little Rock, which liaison then produced a daughter whom Jones refused to meet for 25 years, and if that movie included a character who was a Dallas city councilman named Chad West, the producers would bring in a rewrite man. The name Chad West is that cliche. Same deal with a TV reporter named Scoop Jefferson. Are you kidding us? Were we born yesterday?

To get to the bottom of this Scoop Jefferson situation, D Magazine hired a misunderstood ex-cop with a checkered past and a heart of gold to go undercover on his last day before retirement and fall in love with the one girl he knows he should avoid—and also to break into WFAA’s servers with the help of a precocious, fast-talking teenage hacker in an unmarked van. Here are the contents of a folder our ex-cop found. It was labeled “viewer feedback emails about Scoop Jefferson and other things.” 

***

“What the hell? Did Brett Shipp go around calling himself Scoop Shipp? For that matter, did his father, Bert Shipp, ever wear a ushanka on camera? The station has gone downhill since Iola Johnson left.”

“I absolutely love Scoop Jefferson! I used to watch him in Indianapolis when my husband and I lived there, before he took a job with a company that puts flavoring in chlorine and we moved to Garland to be closer to the chlorine-flavoring factory. You guys should change David Schechter’s name to Schoop Schechter!”

“Whoopi Goldberg is trash. Delete your station.”

“I’ve been trying to watch Good Morning Texas on your website, but the incessant pop-up autoplay ads drove me so insane that I threw my laptop into a grain thresher. Anyway, do you have 30 photos to remind me just why I love dogs and cats? And how much money do I really get from a reverse mortgage? How about this crepey skin on my arms?”

“I would like to know how Scoop Jefferson does on Wordle every day. May I be so bold as to propose a nightly segment on the newscast called ‘Scoople,’ where Scoop breaks down each of his Wordle guesses that day, talking viewers through his reasoning and why he chose the words he did? I would tune in!”

“I saw Chris Lawrence working out at the Lakewood YMCA the other day. Tell him to stop neglecting his calves. LOL.”

“If y’all are committed to this Scoop Jefferson gag, then fine. I’ll allow it. But on one condition: he has to wear a fedora with a ‘PRESS’ badge stuck in the hatband. At all times. Even when he’s at Jane McGarry’s house.”

“Does Pete Freedman wear a cockeyed baseball hat to work every day?”

“I saw that Cox Media Group announced in February it acquired WFAA from its parent company, TEGNA, and that TEGNA’s chairman, Howard D. Elias, said, ‘After evaluating this opportunity against TEGNA’s standalone prospects and other strategic alternatives, our board concluded that this transaction maximizes value for TEGNA shareholders.’ I notice he didn’t mention Scoop Jefferson.” 

Author

Tim Rogers

Tim Rogers

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