[1] In terms of personality, Harris further describes Lounds as having "the longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego",[1] sharpened by frustrated ambition: He had worked in straight journalism for ten years when he realized that no one would ever send him to the White House.

He saw that his publishers would wear his legs out, use him until it was time for him to become a broken-down old drunk manning a dead-end desk, drifting inevitably toward cirrhosis or a mattress fire.

[1]Resentful of this treatment, Lounds goes into tabloid journalism, receiving much higher pay for writing popular but factually questionable news stories.

In this continuity, the character is a tabloid blogger who runs a true crime website called TattleCrime, and who reports on some of the murders investigated by Will Graham.

[8][9] Paul Doro of Shock Till You Drop, reviewing the TV series adaptation, Hannibal, found the usage of Lounds in that series to be an exception to the show's otherwise high quality, questioning the premise of "a writer for TattleCrime.com, who somehow manages to penetrate crime scenes and gain access to highly secure facilities despite being a notorious tabloid journalist".

Hoping to lure Dolarhyde into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he blatantly misrepresents the killer as an impotent homosexual and the product of incest.

This infuriates Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, glues him to an antique wheelchair, shows him slides of his victims, and forces him to recant the published allegations into a tape recorder.

[11] The 2002 film adaptation of Red Dragon, however, retains the original scene from the novel, and shows Dolarhyde (portrayed by Ralph Fiennes) biting Lounds' lips off in close-up.

[7] In that episode, Lounds snoops around a crime scene to write a story about Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and "The Minnesota Shrike", the serial killer he is trying to catch.

She is caught engaging in unethical journalism on several occasions, once by Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), when she attempts to secretly tape record a conversation between them.

[12] Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) make a deal with Lounds to write a story about Dr. Abel Gideon (Eddie Izzard), a patient at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who has murdered a nurse.

He also makes her assist as he surgically removes organs from still-conscious hospital psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Chilton (Raúl Esparza),[16] with the intention of leaving a "gift basket" for the Ripper.

[17] An anonymous tip brings Lounds back to the observatory she and Chilton were taken to by Gideon, where she finds the body of FBI agent Beverly Katz (Hetienne Park), sectioned vertically and displayed in tableau.

Lounds first appears in season 3 during the second arc, when Graham is called out of retirement three years after Lecter's arrest to profile a serial killer dubbed "The Tooth Fairy".