Elaine Low is a staff writer at The Ankler, covering the evolution of Hollywood’s business model and work culture in the streaming age. She also writes Strikegeist, the Ankler’s newsletter on the historic Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

She was previously a senior entertainment reporter for Insider (formerly Business Insider), where she explored the shift in Netflix’s corporate culture leading up to its wave of layoffs in 2022, and examined how the pandemic’s economic impact on young industry workers may have produced a “lost generation” of Hollywood creatives.

Prior to that, she spent several years as a senior reporter for Variety covering the business of television, with a focus on media strategy and executive leadership. She wrote or co-bylined nine Variety cover stories, covering Netflix’s global programming strategy, Mindy Kaling’s growing comedy empire, Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn’s fashion e-commerce series at Amazon Studios, and Hollywood’s reckoning over representation in the wake of national Black Lives Matter protests, the last of which won a Los Angeles Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award.

For nearly five years before that, Elaine was a reporter and producer for Investor’s Business Daily on the media, retail and personal finance beats. Her IBD Weekly cover stories explored a variety of topics, from the gender wealth gap to the self-care industrial complex to the e-commerce retail wars. She has appeared on CNBC, NPR, CBS News and BBC Radio, among other news programs.