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 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 far and so fast that a share of Times stock dipped lower than the price of its Sunday paper. But reports of the Lady’s death were greatly exaggerated.
It’s not the newspaper it used to be, but it’s still 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 this scattershot attempt to explain the challenges of spreading the news in these technologically turbulent times. So, instead of nonstop insights into the politics and inner-workings of the Times, we get a parade of plugs for blogger websites and 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 floundering newspaper industry.
The filmmakers seem oddly uninformed about the business of newspapers. Maybe that’s why they dart distractingly from one topic to the next.
Luckily, there’s David Carr, the Times’ freewheeling media columnist, who seems to have modeled his life after Hunter S. Thompson, complete with a drugged-out past and a curmudgeonly personality. Carr is a blast, tenacious in both his reporting skills and in his defense of the Times. The scene where he verbally assaults one of the newspaper’s founders is too sublime for words.
Apparently, the filmmakers also loved Carr’s contributions. The second half of the movie spends more time on the colorful columnist than it does on issues such as how newspapers can compete with Twitter, WikiLeaks, ProPublica and countless other distractions. In some ways, that’s a smart decision, considering how dry “Page One” would be without Carr. But it also underscores the film’s inability to focus on the subject at hand.
The film’s ADD is a bit ironic; that’s one of the problems newspapers face with their readers. At one point, “Page One” even jumps to some out-of-leftfield reminiscing about Daniel Ellsberg and Watergate, a few digs at Judith Miller and her unsubstantiated reports of WMDs in Iraq, and a lot of blathering by outsiders like Gay Talese and former TV Guide writer Jeff Jarvis who know nothing about how the Times operates. Inconsequential archival footage, several repetitive clips of Carr debating the role of newspapers at media conferences, and a trip back to Carr’s hometown of Minneapolis do nothing to inform viewers who were expecting an insider’s view of the Times.
Who knew newspaper people were so boring? At least that’s the way they come across in “Page One.” It’s interesting when Tim Arango decides to leave the newspaper’s media department so he can transfer to the Baghdad bureau. But, do we go along with him to see him assimilate from a comfortable job to the rigors of a Baghdad assignment? Of course not. It’s just one more moment when “Page One” misses the story.
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