À la une du New York Times

"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

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.

In his review of the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times (Paper thin insights, Weekend Australian Review Sept 24-25) Lynden Barber ascribes "pomposity" to the Time's "olde-timey font and (page) layout." I disagree- in its bid to be more appealing and easier to read, the layout and font chosen are tastefully attention-drawing and pleasing to look at. Indeed I consider the highly characteristic New York Times nameplate a historical objet d'art. Such strongly-felt reactions to the visual elements of typography used by the New York Times suggests that the typeface form of letters selected for headlines and article text as well as page layout are designed to evoke visceral responses in profoundly subliminal ways.

The impact of fonts and page layouts is not just an esoteric aside. The style used for letters, characters and text are designed to create a readable, coherent and visually satisfying whole that works without the reader being aware.Where spoken language relies on tone of voice or gesture to convey emotion, the visual form of the written word possesses mysterious connotative properties. Ultimately, a world without charismatically constructed letters, numerals and symbols leads to unengaging newspapers, whether online or in print.

Joseph Y Ting

When Johann Gutenberg invented the printing process around 1439, he probably couldn't foresee the future, where people would consider his invention redundant and obsolete.

The digital revolution , internet, etc have started to compete with printed media such as the legendary newspaper The New York Times, a newspaper that is depicted in this documentary.

We get follow some of their reporters, the job at the editing office, and also the new approach to the internet and surfpads.

But will The New York Times be able to compete with websites like Wikileaks etc?

And how will they survive in climate with ever descending ad incomes?

Will the internet completely destroy investigating journalism?

Because nowadays anyone can be investigating journalist by simply putting their discoveries on a personal blog or any other type of internetbased platform.

These and many other questions are discussed in this highly interesting documentary about media from one of the most prominent newspapers in the world.

The documentary also touches upon the heavy criticisms that newspaper received during the Judith Miller, Jayson Blair scandals and ever growing question, can we trust media at all?

The only flaws I can think of is that sometimes director Andrew Rossi seem to lack focus, not knowing what he wants to tell, he should made the viewers get closer to some of the people working at the New York Times.

I would love to know more about David Carrs background, a colourful journalist, and some of his co workers background.

But this film should been seen by anyone wanting to know more about media, journalism in this riveting documentary. So viewers who liked Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004), The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009), Starsuckers (2009) should see this one.

Director Andrew Rossi takes a candid look at the venerable Big Apple daily, and how it is adapting to the growing prevalence of the internet as people's primary news source.

This story is told primarily from the perspective of the staff on the media desk; editor Bruce Headlam, columnist David Carr and correspondent Brian Stelter. These are the guys in the unenviable position of reporting on (amongst other things) the bankruptcy of other newspapers caused by the growth of online news and the drop in advertising and circulation revenues. Carr in particular gets most of the screen time, and deservedly so. He is a profane and fiercely intelligent presence with a back-story worthy of Hollywood itself, while Stelter is that unique case of someone who started out as an anonymous news blogger before moving over to print media. After outing his identity in a series of stories about his site, the Times then went and offered him a job. He is one of the new breed – a journalist who embraces the advantages of developing technology. He is seen at his cubicle with several computers running, tweeting about his stories, even bringing in a brand new iPad to demonstrate to his dumbfounded old-school colleagues.

Rossi spent a year in the Times newsroom and the film covers a variety of stories and issues covered by the paper in that time, including the Iraq War; Carr's piece on the bankruptcy of the Tribune Company (which he linked directly to mismanagement by its new owner Sam Zell and his executives); and the explosion of Wikileaks into the public consciousness with their publication of the Afghan War logs. This last is also compared to the similar case of the infamous Pentagon Papers leak in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg to the Times. The advances in the internet have essentially done away with the idea of a Deep Throat. No longer will an insider source need to work with a reporter. Now they can just go online and tell their tale to everyone. While this means that "the truth will out" so much more, it also takes away that important middle step of fact-checking, confirming and crafting a story that a properly trained and respected journalist provides.

In its examination of the slowly dwindling print business, this film covers similar territory to the final season of The Wire. David Simon built the conclusion of his opus around a somewhat fictionalised version of his own former haunt, the Baltimore Sun. Simon features in this movie briefly as well, in a short clip of a televised debate on the dying art of a reporter working a beat that also included Arianna Huffington of the all-conquering Huffington Post. He raises a very solid point though: even with everyone and his wife blogging the news from their bedrooms, there will always be a place for the reporter on the scene, notebook in hand. The delivery method may change with the times (pardon the pun) but the infrastructure, methods and ethics of the newspaper will always be necessary. The "more with less" evangelists are having their day in the sun, but hopefully a new day will dawn soon enough. The best way to make sure that happens is to accept the fact that news costs. The film touches on the idea of pay-walls on the online versions of the paper. I'm all for these personally. You have to pay for the physical newspaper, why shouldn't you pay for the digital version?

It's rare that I get to say this, but all the poster quotes are true. This is a fascinating film that covers a lot of ground in only 92 minutes. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy my online subscription to the New York Times.