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Ted Humphries is the host of News Time with Ted Humphries, Odyssey's number-six-rated news program, and he is deep into a multi-part investigation of algae growing in the town's storm drains. With his unpaid student intern Zoe Grant running the camera, Ted interviews Professor Eugene Meltsner, who patiently explains that the algae is growing a bit faster than normal but almost certainly poses no danger to anyone. Sky, the station owner, has had enough. She reminds Ted that news is a business run on her father's founding principle, "Quality, but cheap," and that his slow, careful stories are putting viewers to sleep and scaring off advertisers. As proof of what young audiences actually want, she shows him a clip from the A-Jax Manick Show, a fast-talking internet program full of wild conspiracy theories, including the claim that Eugene is covering up a UFO landing. Ted thinks the clip is nonsense, but its thirty thousand views convince him he needs, as Sky puts it, a little pizzazz.

Zoe agrees to help Ted seem more relevant, and the results are disastrous. Ted attempts the first-ever live interview from inside a popular video game, proudly introducing his avatar, Tedor the Interviewer, and declaring, "My special abilities include fireballs and listening." Another player promptly rips off his character's legs and sets him on fire. Next, Ted tries delivering financial market news while bouncing at a trampoline park, and he wipes out spectacularly. The video goes semi-viral, but only because every bit of economics has been cut out, leaving nothing but footage of Ted falling down. He feels like a joke.

Then Sky arrives with what she calls great news: the company Hypermax Nutri-Energy wants to sponsor Ted's show, but only if he presents special reports praising their new protein bars, reports the company will write for him. Zoe worries the sponsor will simply say whatever it wants, and Ted agrees. He refuses, declaring that his pursuit of the truth is not for sale, even if it costs him his job. At that very moment, Eugene calls: something big has happened with the algae. At the storm drain on the south end of town, Ted and Zoe find a huge, smelly mass of algae oozing out of the drain cover. But the explanation turns out to be dull. Eugene has traced the bloom to too much fertilizer on the Evans farm; it will dissipate in a few days and affect almost nobody. Just then A-Jax Manick shows up with his own camera, films the ooze with plans to add creepy music, and tells his viewers a slime monster from a secret government experiment is loose in Odyssey, before pitching apocalypse survival kits complete with radiation-absorbing milkshakes. When Ted and Eugene object to the lies, A-Jax shrugs that all that matters is that people watch his show, and his phony video goes viral.

Defeated, Ted decides to give in and record the sponsored protein bar report, since the only facts he can verify are that the bars are edible and individually wrapped. But when Zoe encourages him not to give up, saying she is sure it will all come together, something clicks. Ted realizes the pieces of the story do not come together at all: the Evans farm is on the north end of town, the algae bloom is on the south end, and when he checks a map of the storm drain system at City Hall, he confirms the two drain systems are not connected. He suspects that a recent storm, the one that nearly collapsed the dam, cracked the northern drain and sent water leaking where it should never go.

Ted rushes off to investigate just half an hour before his broadcast, telling Sky only to stay tuned for a story that will rock the town. That leaves Zoe, despite what she insists is a crippling phobia of cameras, to sit in the anchor chair and nervously introduce herself as Ted Humphries before correcting herself. Ted then phones in a live report from deep in the storm drains beneath Main Street and Howell Avenue, with Eugene at his side. The leaking water has carved out an enormous sinkhole, roughly ten meters across, and the buildings above could collapse into it at any moment. Ted has already alerted the authorities, and police and firefighters are evacuating the area as he speaks. Suddenly part of the ground gives way, Ted shouts "Look out!" and the broadcast goes silent. After a tense moment, Ted's voice returns to assure Zoe that he and Eugene are safe, because danger is simply part of a newsman's job.

Afterward, a re-energized Ted praises Zoe's anchoring and admits he had forgotten what good reporting feels like. When A-Jax comes around asking the master for pointers, Ted asks him whether the algae investigation would still have been good work if it had never led to anything exciting. A-Jax admits it would not, which is exactly Ted's point. "Finding the truth is usually slow, meticulous, and boring work," Ted tells him, and it does not always make good TV, but chasing views and money instead of truth means never accomplishing anything truly important. Zoe agrees with Ted completely; A-Jax decides they are both nuts. Ted and Zoe head out to celebrate doing the right thing, trading a satisfied "Groovy" and "Far out" on the way.