Cascadia Post-Gazette, June 17, 20X0:
Newcomer Wins Local Radio Talent Search
…but the tape by local Osborn University student Shairi Washington, with its near professional poise, cutting edge production, and dazzling R&B sound, was the overall winner. Ms. Washington could not attend the ceremony, but accepted the $1000 cash award and airplay by mail…
Hopewell Democrat-Tribune, May 18, 20X1:
Shairi Washington, Winner of WHPW Contest, Releases First Album
…no one could have predicted that the contest-winning track would be such a hit, but stations have reported near-constant demand for airplay. Shairi Washington, speaking by telephone, said the response was “overwhelming.” “I come from a poor background, and I’m the first one in my family to go to college. So to suddenly have this kind of recognition…I don’t know what to say!” Ms. Washington has retained a local agent, Sheila Newman, to help her deal with the sudden demands of…
Detroit Picayune, October 1, 20X1:
Shairi Washington Signs Contract With SpinCycle Records
…SpinCycle, one of Detroit’s oldest and most powerful R&B production houses. “We are proud to have Shairi represented by a Detroit label,” said her agent Sheila Newman at a press conference. “Shairi has deep roots in Detroit, was born in Detroit. Her name means ‘poetry’ in Swahili, and her songs are indeed poetry for her city and all the places similarly affected by poverty and want…”
Detroit Picayune, March 18, 20X2:
New Shairi Album Goes Multiplatinum
…hot new act out of Michigan, Shairi, has seen her first studio album, Urban Prairie Girl, climb the Billboard charts at an unprecedented rate. Sales estimates are in the hundreds of thousands for physical and digital releases alike. “It’s humbling,” Shairi said in a statement read by her agent Sheila Newman, “for an inner-city girl to climb here from where I started…I’m on top of the world.” Shairi, notoriously private, has never granted an in-person interview but agreed to speak with the Picayune by phone…
Vanity Magazine, January 5, 20X3:
Shairi Announces Nationwide Tour
“…the demand has been there from day one,” said Shairi’s agent, “but Shairi is very shy and retiring, and it took a long time to convince her. But once the decision was made, we began training, rehearsing, almost ten hours a day.” Reports indicate that the tour will feature substantial special effects, both practical and digital, and one effect in particular has cost millions of dollars with the subcontractor bound to secrecy by a non-disclosure agreement…”
Vanity Magazine, June 1, 20X3:
Shairi Tour Breaks Records
…response to pent-up demand, tickets sold out online in minutes. Even with the addition of second shows and new stops on the tour, scalpers are selling “Shairi Ascendant” tickets for ten times their asking price. But to the fans thronging outside the venue for Shairi’s first performance tomorrow, it is money well spent…
New York Herald, June 15, 20X3:
Questions Remain About Shairi “Glitch”
…agent Sheila Newman continued to deflect questions about the seeming lack of synchronization between Shairi’s lips and the music, and what appeared to be pixelation of one of the singer’s arms. Captured on numerous cell phones in the venue, the “glitches” have raised questions among many pundits. “Could Sheila be the Milli Vanilli of our time?” asked one particularly cutting op/ed the day after…
New York Herald, July 8, 20X3:
Will the Real Shairi Washington Please Stand Up?
…Osborn University, in turn, denied that anyone by the name of Shairi Washington had ever attended school there. City of Detroit records show no birth certificate under that name. Shairi’s agent Sheila Newman continues to maintain that the “software Shairi” projected as a hologram during the singer’s live shows was an “avant-garde experiment” and that the vocals and movements were those of her client. To the other allegations, Ms. Newman had no response…
Detroit Picayune, August 27, 20X3:
SpinCycle Records to Close Doors
“…we wanted to believe,” he said, adding “she fooled us all.” SpinCycle, founded in 1970, crumbled under a wave of litigation related to the now-infamous Shairi Washington scandal. The revelation that the singer’s physical appearance and songs were all generated on a computer, allegedly by her agent, left the label with “no choice” but to shutter operations. “It’s small consolation that we weren’t the only ones fooled; this thing has hit us and Detroit at the worst possible time…”
Hopewell Democrat-Tribune, September 27, 20X4:
“I Made Up Someone To Be Who I Couldn’t Be” Says Newman In Court
…statement read, in part, “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I have a problem; I am an addict, I need help. I can only beg for your forgiveness.” The prosecutor was unmoved by Ms. Newman’s plea, contending that her fraudulent creation and marketing of the Shairi Washington persona and music was not only “nakedly, blatently fraudulent, a confidence game,” but that the stunt represented “the culmination of a patter of increasingly sophisticated, grandiose, and narcissistic schemes…”
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