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Blame it all on Monica Lewinsky.

Not too long ago, I was watching TV and came across one of those so-called “reality TV” shows. Bad enough that so many people are getting paid good money to produce a silly season of fear factors, police chases, and bachelorettes wooing bachelors. Then someone, somewhere decided it made sense to spend millions of dollars to create a show hosted by Monica Lewinsky and featuring a bachelorette being wooed by 20 suitors wearing masks that make them look like the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still. This is reality?

Here’s reality: Dozens of people I know out of work and desperately looking for a job in the worst job market anyone’s see in more than a decade. All good people, all talented people, all eager to work. So I wondered: Are people so desperate for entertainment they would watch a dubious celebrity hosting a show where a date-starved woman humiliates herself in front of millions of viewers by choosing the love of her life from a group of masked men? If they are, then maybe it’s time to redefine the concept of reality programming.

And what better place to do that redefining than on this relatively new medium called the Internet. So I ran the idea for a Web-based reality program by a few of these good people and asked what they thought of a site where they would talk candidly about dealing with one of the most painful episodes of their lives: being unemployed. To make it a worthwhile destination, they would have to really put themselves on the line in the hopes of attracting the attention of prospective employers — who could then get in touch with them through the contact system we’ve set up on the site. The site itself would feature their personal stories, as well as two counts: one showing the days in operation and the other showing the number of the participants unemployed. When that number reads zero, I told them, the site goes away.

To me, it had all the ingredients for a good show: the human element, the drama, the quest for a seemingly unattainable goal, the uncertain outcome. That’s 8goodpeople.com.

The challenge was limiting the number to eight because so many good people are out there, looking for work in a variety of fields all over the country. But we settled on this Fellowship of 8 because I thought that number would give you a chance to meet and get to really know this small, but diverse group of people. The end result: eight extremely talented writers who have been out of work for more than a year. One has a Pulitzer. Another cut her teeth at National Geographic, where she learned the fine art of interviewing. Another was a respected columnist and bureau chief of a major business publication. All eight were recognized as inhabiting the top tier of journalism — as writers and as reporters. And they can’t find work. This is real. This matters.

And so to Monica Lewinsky, my thanks: if you hadn’t taken on hosting duties for one of the lamest reality show concepts I’ve ever heard about and prompted me to envision this Web version of reality TV, this site would never have been born. And you would never have gotten the chance to meet these 8 good people.

Connie Guglielmo
May 9, 2003