A rom-coms one true love: A journalist

There are a few key ingredients you need to make a good rom-com. First, you need two charismatic actors as our love interests. Two, you need a good script that will give your charismatic actors the material to make us laugh and, sometimes, cry. Three, you need a relationship that will definitely never work in real life, but you will love anyway. The final ingredient? You need one of them to be a journalist.

Seriously, it is amazing how many iconic rom-coms have someone playing a journalist, especially in the 2000s. I had never really noticed until becoming one myself. I usually give my girlfriend a nod every time I see a journalist in the media, but after watching so many rom-coms, my neck was moving up and down like I was being possessed. 

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is the most recognisable. Columnist Andie Anderson needs a column to write, so she gives herself the challenge to get a man and lose him all in the span of ten days. Unluckily for her, she happened to pick charming marketing executive Benjamin, tasked to make a girl fall in love with him in ten days.

For anyone wondering, no, you do not get your hands on a free Matthew McConaughey every article you write. If only. But don’t let that discourage you. There are still some perks.

It’s a classic. You know it, you love it. It’s a film which can’t exist if she were not a journalist.

Andie stands side by side with her journalist counterparts, such as Drew Barrymore’s Josie Geller in Never Been Kissed, Jennifer Garner’s Jenna Rink in 13 Going on 30, Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada and of course, Renée Zellweger’s iconically relatable Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones Diary. And that’s only to name a few.

Quite the collection of characters. The only thing we are missing is the Avengers-type crossover where they all work together in one newsroom tasked to create a new age magazine. The French Dispatch two, if you like.

It makes sense to have your character be a journalist. It gives you certain narrative choices which could not exist without it.

Why else would Josie Geller be back in school without trying to prove herself? How better for Bridget Jones to embarrass herself than on live TV? How else would this film even exist if Andie weren’t trying to write an article about her experience with Benjamin?

Without their jobs as writers or editors, we would have lost out on many of the iconic rom-coms which shaped our unrealistic standards of relationships.

I watch these films with a new angle now as a journalist. I watch them and find myself thinking ‘wow, if only it were that easy’.

Let’s have it right, they may be journalists by trade, but the ways in which they go about their work are far from reality. 

We would all love to only have to focus on getting one article done a month, or show complete disregard for dealing with a budget, and be working with a young Hugh Grant and Mark Ruffalo, but sadly, that is not how it works.

I feel sorry for the people who decided to take a job in this field under that pretence. Well, I feel about as sorry for you as I do for people who decided to be lawyers because they watched Suits. You should have known better.

Though I could take the heightened version of our job if it meant people were still getting interested in being journalists. We had a good thing going. The people get good films, and journalists get a better reputation. 

Let’s get rid of the trend of having romance films where someone is dying, and let’s bring back journalists. We could do with some of that now.

You may not fall in love with McConaughey, but you will get to write about him. That’s close enough, right?