Nakednews.com, Where More Than Facts Are Laid Bare

TORONTO â€”  There’s been a lot of ink spilled and hot air expended about how to cover and comment on the World Trade Center disaster, the anthrax scare and the bombing of Afghanistan. How aggressively should the media pursue operational details? Have they been too uncritical of the administration’s domestic antiterrorist policies? Should they keep their clothes on?

This last question is certainly not going to be entertained by Dan Rather or Christiane Amanpour. But it was a concern of the anchors of nakednews.com, an online news operation that features newsreaders--men and women--in the altogether.

Their ethical dilemma was particularly acute after the trade center attack, which, unlike the open-ended, ongoing anthrax situation and bombings, was sudden, catastrophic. Wouldn’t showing everything be showing insufficient respect for the thousands who died? Wouldn’t breasts, genitalia and pubic hair undermine the gravity of the situation?

“If you closed your eyes right now, you wouldn’t know if I was naked or not,� says Kathy Pinckert, director of public relations for nakednews.com. “But you’re going to hear what I have to say. So what is critical to that is what are you hearing? And yet we also have respect. Victoria did the opening today. She was personally very affected by this, and her choice today was to do her news reading in a suit. Lucas on the other hand gave his news reading nude. Same news, same communication.�

Pinckert, who is fully clothed, is the sitting in the dot.com-looking offices/studios of Naked News in downtown Toronto. It is the day after the attacks, which is why Victoria Sinclair, the statuesque principal anchor (she is no longer with the show), still felt so upset that she couldn’t read the news as she customarily does--without her clothes on.

“We were all offered the opportunity to do what we felt comfortable with,� says Devon Caldwell, who reads the sports. “I did my report in the nude.�

It might come as a surprise that anyone at Naked News would care. After all, none of the anchors are trained journalists. They don’t do breaking news or investigative reporting. They are, in a sense, the eye candy of television news taken to its logical conclusion. And yet the irony here is that the anchors are not perfect physical specimens, and the copy they read is more BBC than ABC or NBC or CBS. There is a winking at the camera, a certain kind of self-conscious amusement at delivering news of the missile defense system or a cold front sweeping down from Canada with all that flesh, the topography of the human body, in view.

“The tone was always to be news naked,� Pinckert says. “The nudity was a metaphor for getting down to the bare facts, the naked truth, if you will.� In other words, the nudity doesn’t undermine their credibility, it enhances it.

Pinckert is being a bit disingenuous here. The anchors, with one exception, all operate under pseudonyms. Other journalists are not allowed to watch them work. The location of the studio, which, ironically, was formerly a church, is kept under wraps. The two men who started the site insist on remaining anonymous. These facts seem to suggest that there’s something at least potentially salacious about what they do.

According to Pinckert, the idea originated when the two anonymous creators were watching the news “and doing what I call a guy thing, which is ‘What if?’ I think most men probably have a ‘What if?’ with a female newscaster.� (An arguable point.)

The site, which is free, went up in December 1999. Initially it had about 4 million hits a month; now it receives 6 million. Their revenue comes from membership in the Naked News Club ($9.95 a month), merchandising and advertising from “Sony to Universal Music to different gambling entities to condoms,� Pinckert says.

A viewer logging on to the site selects which gender they want to see, bringing up an image about the size of a couple of postage stamps (larger if they join the Naked News Club). The program is divided into segments on international and domestic news, sports, travel, weather, technology and life and leisure, much like CNN Headline News. There’s even an occasional editorial, as when Lily Kwan delivered one opposing the bombing in Afghanistan. Sometimes these segments are delivered in the nude from the get-go; other times the newsreader appears fully clothed and disrobes, though not in a tantalizing, come-hither way but in a more leisurely, almost unconscious fashion, as if they were on the telephone. The effect is not erotic. It’s almost banal.

“The anchors are never asked to do anything that we would feel uncomfortable with,� Caldwell says.

Clearly, these people aren’t exotic dancers or nudists. There are 13 of them, four men and nine women, of varying sizes, ages, ethnicity and backgrounds. Most are Canadians who answered ads in the local papers or online. Lucas Tyler, 33, was, of all things, an investment banker; Gretchen Frazier (her real name), 31, a surgical technician and aspiring actress; Carmen Russo, 42, a single mom with a resume that includes modeling, acting and selling dental equipment; Devon Caldwell, 19, a part-time waitress and nursing home worker. Pinckert, who seems to wear many hats, including helping to select the newsreaders, was previously a consultant in L.A. She says she handled, among other things, a person very close to the O.J. Simpson case.

Naked News has been savvy about selecting its anchor people. The premise of the show might seem like exploitation, but it has been applied in a seemingly enlightened, politically correct manner. The female newscasters, who were the inspiration for the show and remain its focus, are attractive, but they’re not knockouts. It’s apparently a silicon-free zone.

“Women can watch the female show and not feel insecure or inadequate,� Pinckert says. “They’re accessible people, as opposed to the extremes of beauty that are often promulgated in advertising, film, television and certainly through models. They’re not meeting some idealization of womanhood.

“Always first and foremost is above-the-neck qualities,� she continues. “People who can read well, communicate well, who have the ability to carry some depth of emotion when it’s required, an edge of humor when it’s appropriate. It might seem trivial or trite to you, but if you don’t have it from here up, if you can’t read a TelePrompTer, if you can’t get the gist of a story, it’s not a job that you can do if you have the best body on the entire planet.�

Some of the newscasters were concerned less with the nudity than with reading the TelePrompTer when they auditioned. Tyler, who says he needed to do something adventurous, auditioned in his underwear--a baby step to the full Monty--and thought he’d blown his reading. Caldwell, who was trying to pick up some extra cash, was concerned about reading because she stutters.

Frazier first came to Pinckert’s attention when she successfully deceived panelists on “To Tell the Truth,� and was comfortable in front of the camera from the beginning because she wants to act.

So popular is the format that Naked News also has a pay-per-view show in Canada ($3.99 for 45 minutes of “infotainment�) and shortly will have one in the States.

There is talk about expanding the brand and even having foreign correspondents and location shoots. Weather, of course, permitting.