© Magnolia Pictures Photo The New York Times media columnist David Carr searches for his next scoop in the documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times.
The haughty reputation of
The New York Times has taken several hits during the past decade, from Jayson Blair and Judith Miller to newsroom layoffs and dubious partnerships with folks like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But nothing undermined the Gray Lady quite like a 2009 article in The Atlantic declaring that the end of Times was near.
Was it really possible that the nation's "paper of record" was about to become journalism's Lehman Bros., gone in the blink of an eye? It sure seemed that way when its financial worth plummeted so precipitously that a share of
Times stock became cheaper than the price of its Sunday paper. But reports of the Lady vanishing proved a bit premature, if not irresponsible.
It's no longer the bastion of journalism it once was in the days when it stuck its neck out publishing
The Pentagon Papers, but it's still very much a thriving entity, as suggested in
Page One: Inside The New York Times. For nearly a year, filmmakers Andrew Rossi and Kate Novack became what Rossi calls the proverbial "fly on the wall" at the paper's Midtown Manhattan headquarters, gaining access to not just the newsroom, but also departing Executive Editor Bill Keller and the roundtable meetings at which the top editors pitch and debate what stories they think belong on "A1."
Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? That's what I thought, too, until I was about 20 minutes into what proves to be a scatterbrained attempt at examining the who, what, where and why in relation to how the media can best disseminate the news to today's young, hip demographic. So, instead of nonstop insights into the politics and inner workings of the Times, we get a succession of plugs for blogger websites like newser.com and Vice magazine, not to mention a big kiss-up to Steve Jobs and the miracle of the iPad, which
Page One all but declares to be the savior of the foundering print industry.
Comment: Where have we heard the the "good guy" comment before? Oh right, with all of those serial killers who were "upstanding members of the community." That's the thing with psychopaths; they are so good at imitating human behavior they can seem more human than humans do.