Inside the ‘Horned Up’ Office Culture at ABC News

Sascha didn’t pay much attention to T.J. Holmes when he began working as an anchor for ABC News in 2014. They were both pulling graveyard shifts, and the then-27-year-old digital news associate spent most of her time focused on her job and trying to stay awake. But a few months later, after Holmes asked her for help setting up his Instagram account, he quickly became flirtatious. “I’m learning a lot about you. I might actually like you,” he wrote in an email. They texted for hours one weekend, and Holmes expressed what Sascha calls a “crazy amount of interest” in her personal life. She knew he was married but found his charisma intoxicating. She rarely felt validated as a low-level staffer, and Holmes often seemed like “the only person in the building who took me seriously.” It wasn’t long, she says, before he booked a hotel room near the network’s Upper West Side headquarters and sent her the details. When she walked into the room, he was sitting on the bed.

Rumors are fickle things, but this one about Rihanna touring is too exciting not to share. This journalist is running away to join the circus (really). Leo is dating another Israeli model, and her age (19) has plenty of people worked up; here’s our favorite tweet about it. In other news, Panera is getting into the accessory game. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Basketball fans are paying through the nose for a chance to see LeBron James break the NBA’s all-time scoring record this week. Vanity Fair is going deep on the Idaho student murders. And the pigeon that someone turned pink has died from inhaling toxins from the dye. Maybe it is time for humanity to wrap it up.

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