This Just In.

This Just In

by Yolanda Joe Doubleday, March 2000 $23.95, ISBN 0-385-49256-l

Cleverly crafted like a 30-minute TV news segment, Yolanda Joe's latest novel reads like breaking news: fast-paced, attention-grabbing, dramatic. The setting is Chicago, the nation's third-largest market for broadcast journalism, and station WKBA is in last place in the local ratings war. Heads begin to roll when ratings plunge, and then keep on rolling to increase the profit margin even as the ratings start to rise again. To survive, if you're black or female, you have to be twice as good to go half as far. If you're both black and female, you have to get down and dirty on occasion to create the long-denied opportunity you deserve.

A former news writer for CBS News in Chicago before becoming a full-time novelist, Yolanda Joe realistically captures the cutthroat environment this corporate roulette creates. WKBA is filled with aging veterans whose insecurities make them vicious when anyone who looks like competition gets too close and ambitious climbers who claim to be doing you a favor while they stab you in the back.

WKBA is so notoriously racist that it's joked that the call letters stand for "Whites Kicking Blacks' Ass." The blacks are last hired, first fired; yet those with seniority, and all its attendant benefits, get the same swift boot. When black staffers create a union, the Black Employees Network, race issues divide the sisterhood of the five female friends--four black, one white--who are the novel's protagonists. After tripping up themselves and each other trying to sidestep the landmines of racism and sexism, they finally realize it's the same old "reckless capitalism" that's really blowing up everyone's spot.

Sometimes Joe's prose reads like a Journalism 101 primer as she interprets industry jargon to lay readers. She also shows a tendency to rely too heavily on the clever plot structure to provide the narrative cohesion that her character development often does not. For instance, the supporting cast of black male lovers are pure stock figures, but remain likable because they support their women even as career demands test their relationships. This lust In allows readers to know what it feels like to "walk around in the skin of a woman in broadcast news." While her sophomore effort may leave some readers in search of greater depth, Joe offers an enjoyable, identifiable story perfect for light summer reading.

Angela Ards is a writer and editor with Ms. Magazine.