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Sacharissa Cripslock had come a long way in life. From a prim and proper engraver’s daughter, angry at how life was unfair and disloyal – certainly certain people were, people she would not dignify with a name more specific than ‘certain people’ as they certainly had not earned such a thing - to a savvy and cunning newshound, eager to tear at the news of the day with increasingly sharp teeth.
Her natural assets hadn’t hurt any, of course, tempting the young men of the city to come bearing gifts of news and gossip in order to court her favor.
Unfortunately for them, the only one she was interested in having court her favor was William de Worde.
Unfortunately for her, said William de Worde had not shown any particular favor to her, tho’ had not shown any particular disfavor to her either.
It was confusing, this semi-existent possible potential for a love-life, so Cripslock put it aside in favor of pursuing the one thing she knew she could catch: the news.
She went after interviews with the tenacity of a rat-catching terrier. She pursued topics as far as she could find them. She left no-one and no-thing alone in the pursuit of her stories.
And with her partner in crime (so would say some of those who had run afoul of the newly invented news), Moist von Lipwig, she invented investigative journalism in Ankh-Morpork.
She also invented the ethics of investigative journalism, a thing which confused many, ethics not being a thing that was highly known or prized in the city.
Moist applauded her efforts from afar. He still felt the shadow of Vetenari breathing down his neck, back from the days when success had been required for life – literally – so continued to embrace a more pragmatic view of such things – that they were good enough in their time and place, but hardly a requirement.
Sacharissa was fiercely loyal to her small band of informants, never mind that they had – at least most of them – come to her originally because of the fineness of her bosom and the desire to cuddle up with it in a more than strictly platonic sense, rather than any sense of civic duty.
Anyone that went after them soon found themselves up against a fierce foe that had no problem with playing dirty, as those who called her ‘muckraker’ would be happy to attest.
She was relentless in pursuit of the truth of a situation – or, as so often happened, the plurality of truths that surrounded a situation. She was determined to be both fair and honest – a noble Dream, in a city that was so often determined to be neither.
Setbacks and obstacles – of which there were, sadly, many along her way – did nothing to deter her.
Quite the opposite in fact. Opponents soon learned that if they truly wished to be rid of her, the best and fastest way to do so was simply to give in and let her have her interviews and investigations. Anything else would simply have her upping the ante to where they quickly found themselves priced out of the game.
Not that it was easy, getting to this place. Oh, no. She found herself cursed at, and shot at (even when she wasn’t doing an investigative piece alongside Vimes). Things were said in her presence that would have made her younger self curl up in a ball with her hands over her ears, hoping it would stop.
She herself, however, kept going. Neither dark of night nor potty of mouth would stay her from her appointed pieces. Neither would stab of knife or shot of gun or nasty spell of magic, for that matter, tho’ there had been those who had tried all of them – and more – over the years.
And even when she had reached what she felt was the pinnacle of her profession and gotten an interview with Vetenari himself – an interview that still remained her most popular and successful, even given an award by Vetenari for service to the public for having written and published it - she still kept on.
She was a journalist, after all, and a journalist always got their story.
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