As the most esteemed newspaper in America, the New York Times has long been the nation\'s leading source for news and opinion. But with the Internet, the Great Recession, and the much-publicized flameout of several papers, the survival of the Times has been called to question. Filmmaker Andrew Rossi explores the endurance of the Times through the uncertainty of the digital age in his superb documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times. It's out now on DVD.
Many voices within the newsroom are heard, but if Page One has a star, it's the Times\ pugnacious media reporter David Carr. Carr's backstory as a recovered hellion and crack addict lends weight to the confrontational yet fair-minded man who has become the voice of old media. It's wonderful watching him confront and vaporize the idiotic representatives of pompous websites and idiotic cable “news” channels.
But the film revolves not around one particular storyteller or even the Times, but the story of changing times. Intelligent people such as Arianna Huffington seem to confuse aggregating news with searching for it and subjecting facts and claims to analysis. Bloggers have the right to their opinions but an opinion about Iraq isn\'t the same thing as a report from Baghdad. With Judith Miller\'s egregious reporting on weapons of mass destruction, the Times squandered a measure of its prestige, but a bad apple doesn't spoil the orchard, much less the concept of agriculture. That many examples of poor journalism can be cited is no excuse for abolishing journalism—or pretending that rumors and unsubstantiated opinions are a good substitute.
