Mehtaphysics ॐ

I just came back from watching Page One: Inside the New York Times, a new doc about our nation's "paper of record." The narrative mostly stayed out of any posturing, except for setting up the Times as a public institution by delving into history through the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, etc. Fortunately, it was mostly fly-on-the-wall; watching real journalists argue about Twitter, fret over unclear messages from Washington, and ship off to Iraq. 

 

As a younger media consumer, I'm not so into the whole David Carr narrative that everyone seems to focus on. He's hilarious and has a great story behind him, but the environment surrounding the Times was much more interesting to me -- it's how my generation knows and understands news. The scenes in the Gawker offices interviewing Nick Denton were emblematic of that: I recognized all the desks (and especially the "big board") from interning there a few months ago. The short (5min) interlude at SXSW also hit home -- I spotted Ev from Twitter and Dennis from Foursquare. Although they had one or two lines in the film, to younger media consumers like me they are the central movers and shakers in the story that Page One is attempting to tell. Through the lens of the Times, the film takes a flawed perspective on modern media.

 

For example, the film spent a ton of time with two tough issues: the Times coping with Wikileaks and also breaking the news of the Tribune Company going out of business. Sure, I liked Carr exposing the sexual harrassment and gross mismanagement at the Tribune with an air of NYC superiority, but it's stuff we've seen before and understand. The reason the Times is in such dire straits is because they're arguably too rigid and old to deal with stuff we haven't seen before, and don't understand, like dealing with renegade justice-dealer Julian Assange. Even the young, social media-savvy Brian Stelter couldn't decide whether to deal with Wikileaks as a source or a fellow publisher -- these are the rough areas that the Times has to solve in an age of increasingly open information.

 

Inter-media gossip and intrigue is interesting, but the grand trends of the internet, openness, and audiences being used to getting content for free aren't going away. The movie touched on them and tried to address them, but viewed it through the old world lens of the Times. Sure, they got Clay Shirky as a talking head, but it felt as if viewpoints like his were an afterthought. I hope the Times survives, but after seeing Page One, I'm not so sure it deserves to.