Updated: The editor of a newspaper in a small city begins printing fanciful stories to sell more papers; in the process, she stumbles on to a genuine corruption scandal with national implications.

Growing up in a small town, where my grandfather worked on the local paper, I don’t find the idea of an editor-publisher printing salacious gossip and fanciful stories as a credible m.o. to pump up circulation. Quite the opposite.

Be that as it may, the logline sets up a situation, an editor-publisher struggling to survive, and an inciting incident, she stumbles on a real scandal. But it does not present a plot.

The plot would answer the question: what must she do, what becomes her objective goal as a result of discovering the scandal?

Okay. My small town was certified small, population fewer than 1,000 at the time.

If your character is emulating Rupert Murdoch’s business model, well, maybe it will work in a media market of the size you envision. However, if it’s set in the present, then the premise is somewhat undermined by the competition of even juicer gossip (albeit not local) and more fanciful stories on the Internet.

But the critical issue that I suggest needs to be clarified in the logline is what the editor-publisher does after she stumbles on an inconvenient truth that is stranger than her fictions — and no one believes her. After publishing so many falsehoods, why would they?

fwiw.