Is there a better hero for “Page One: Inside the New York Times” than David Carr? He is the guy every young journalist – myself included – has met and envied. His voice cracks like a car compactor chocking on a tank, and his body says north of 80, but he’s maybe 50. He has burned years and brain cells on booze and drugs, and yet come back fighting. Their real drug, though, was and is getting the big story. The quote. Nailing the Big Bad Wolf. I was an addict. Shit, that man is cool.
Carr is the “New York Times,” according to Andrew Rossi, director of this documentary. If Carr can rise from the ashes, then the “Times” can. And the paper has seen its share of ash. The Jayson Blair scandal. Management upheavals. Advertising and revenue wilting as the economy falters. The real kick in the balls: A vastly changing media landscape courtesy of the Internet, 15, 20 years young and far more powerful than the centuries-old printing press. All the news in the world one click away. No more wait for home delivery or newsstand runs. How is The Gray Lady (and the entire newspaper industry) going to get back fighting again? The answer is, of course, the Internet.
Rossi follows more “Times” staffers than Carr, including a war reporter who can file stories from a fox hole, and the new media kids on the block who spit out Tweets like reporters of old sucked down cigarettes. It isn’t easy. A longtime obituary writer is laid off, and anyone who has worked in news will cry for her. I did.
There’s something ironic about the title “Page One.” Having worked at newspapers, I well know the plans – sometimes weeks ahead – of what goes on the front. What is the “face” of the day? Sad death reports. Angry piss at corrupt bureaucrats? Happy features on three-legged dogs? The very idea of such is going away as websites change out the headlines hourly. For the better? No one knows. “Page One” touts meaningful investigative journalism, and shits on an upstart website that treats shocking poverty and war as some ironic gag. Is this what we want? Are we as a nation more interested in the Kardashians than the economy? If that’s the future, we are doomed.
“Page One” isn’t perfect. The ending – where the “Times” wins several Pulitzers in a major staff announcement – is a fumbled climax to a race I didn’t know was occurring. Another sticker: We see a heap of talking guy heads, all as white as me. That is not the modern “New York Times,” or modern journalism, or modern America. Still, a must see for anyone with ink running through his or her veins, and who fondly recalls the rumble of a massive printing press starting up as a magical childhood memory. Every newsroom scenes rock, Rossi film nails the banter and slams, and the editor who calls the liar, “liar.”
B+
