Page One: Inside the New York Times

It's 2010. Newspapers are dying. The New York Times isn't above it all. Ad revenues are down 30% in 2009. The world is exploding with his forms of online media. One of the first news stories to highlight this new wave is the WikiLeaks video of the killing of Iraqi Reuters employees on YouTube. The newsroom is struggling to get a handle on being squeezed from both sides. David Carr is the gruff Media Columnist. His new nemesis is Brian Stelter hired to put give the Times more online presence. This is a fascinating look at a dying industry trying to reinvent itself. It doesn't escape past scandals as it also does some navel gazing with Judy Miller and Jayson Blair. Then WikiLeaks comes with the mother of all leaks. When newsprint finally dies, this will be a fascinating archive into a specific time in media. I found it very watchable. The characters are compelling especially the grumpy David Carr. It's interesting to see him struggle despite the inevitable.

"Page One" promises a look inside the New York Times, but it's also focused on the question that looms large over the whole industry: how can print journalism sustain itself? It's a worthy question, and goodness knows the movie devotes plenty of time to the issue. And if you're on the side of legacy journalism, then revel in the film's best character, David Carr (print's staunchest defender). This guy's all teeth. It's a fun scene watching him shoot down an aggregator during a debate.

But the movie's at its best when it's about the newsroom, and this is compelling stuff: decisions being made during the Wikileaks info dump, Iraq withdrawal, and the laying off o a great deal of the paper's workforce. You do get to be a fly on the wall, and during these scenes, it's good stuff.

7/10

Page One is a documentary that follows the newspaper business, a business that is being beat out by the internet and mobile devices. The film follows one year at The New York Times and the people who work there. The main focus of the film is David Carr, a journalist with a rough exterior but a good heart and a great wit. Carr is a former drug addict and a New York Times reporter for many, many years. Carr has been writing for so long that he even says during the film "If you write about media long enough, eventually you type your way to your own doorstep." Carr is a fascinating character. This summer, we have gotten Thor, Captain America, The Green Lantern, Mr. Popper, ETC, but nothing beats watching a real guy with real strengths and genuine flaws go through every day life. Carr is an incredibly smart and humorous man with quick responses to just about everything. There is a scene, for example, when David Carr is looking at an I Pad with a fellow employee. Carr says "Wow, this is a great reading experience," in which he follows up with "you know what this reminds me of?..a newspaper." There are a lot of funny lines like that from Carr throughout the film. While there are a lot of people we get to meet and share experiences with in Page One, Carr is the only one worth reviewing because he is the only one who brings a realism to his role as a reporter. I must add that seeing how all of these people live is fascinating, but Carr is truly the only one who makes Page One worth reading into.

The phone-hacking scandal that just forced News of the World to close its doors has brought the media to light yet again. Andrew Rossi's "Page One: Inside the New York Times" looks at what is probably the most famous newspaper in the United States, and how it has had to change as media evolves. The main focus is columnist David Carr, but all the major figures from the paper get to appear on screen (although I would have liked to have also seen Paul Krugman and Frank Rich). One of the main topics that the documentary brings up is the large number of newspapers that have closed their doors as more and more people turn to the Internet for news. But as the documentary makes clear, newspapers do still provide certain kinds of coverage that online sources can't provide.

Without a doubt, the NYT has had its problems (like Judith Miller's pushing the WMD claims about Iraq, and Jayson Blair's outright falsification of stories), but it remains an important source of information. In years past the Internet was not widespread, so it was through newspapers that Watergate and the Pentagon Papers got exposed. All of which shows the importance of having an informed population. All in all, this documentary is a really good look at the inner workings of the news business. I recommend it. Among the other interviewees are executive editor Bill Keller, and Baghdad bureau chief Tim Arango.

As a long time reader of the New York Times, I was delighted to see that Page One was showing at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. Page One is a provocative film that explores the complexities of the new media landscape in which the New York Times now finds itself trying to compete and keep its head above water. It is one of the few films that I've seen that really provides the viewer with an inside look at how a major newspaper operates. While the film tends to be pro-New York Times by the very nature of the fact that it was made with their cooperation, it still comes off as fair portrait of America's paper of record. The film focuses in on the media division and how the Times is coping with new challenges from Wikileaks, online news sources, web logs, news aggregating websites, twitter, etc. The film clearly shows why we still need the "so-called" old media to provide the investigative journalism that is hard to find elsewhere.

Newspapers – and especially the elite newspapers – remain a crucial element in our political culture in that they provide a check against abuse of power by both government and corporations. The internet new media still relies on old media for its reporting and is not equipped to replace it. Clearly new models for cooperation between new and old are needed that will allow mainstream media to continue to profitable. The NY Times is proud, magisterial, occasionally arrogant, and absolutely necessary. Like any old institution, it will survive if it continues to change and evolve for new times and technologies.

Page One is part of an on-going conversation that the United States is having about how media will evolve in the age of the Internet. It is useful film for engaging the broader public in the conversation.