Page one: inside the New York Times

Page One: Inside the New York Times offers a frank, funny and passion-filled examination of the changing landscape of print journalism. Giving an insight into the inner workings of life in the New York Times, Page One examines how the staff’s methods and morale have been affected by new technology, and how this one-time monopoly power on information, authority and elitism is ironically floundering in this, “the information age.” Oh these times, they are a-changing.
Though Page One uses talking heads to delve into the economic reasons behind the paper’s lay-offs and changing approach to news, it places more focus on the real characters involved in the production, particularly the staffers at the media desk which, like Page One itself, focuses on media itself and the role in society. Page One also delves into broader issues facing journalists, examining the battle between old and new media using the Pentagon Papers and the Wikileaks Collateral Damage scandal to illustrate.

But undoubtedly the star of the documentary is neither era of media, but the acerbic journalist David Carr. Speaking openly about his drug and alcohol-fuelled past, Carr is fiercely defensive of the paper that threw him a life-rope when they employed him, and quick to verbally slaughter those who dare to criticise it. His passion, humour and old-school method of uncovering huge stories such as the culture of sexual harassment in the Tribune company contrasts with the somewhat cold, technology-obsessed attitudes of his younger colleagues. His dry remarks that his young, Twitter-loving colleagues must be “robots assembled in the basement of the New York Times sent to destroy me” are filled with nostalgia, and resignation towards the unstoppable force of technology.
Director Andrew Rossi is unapologetically sympathetic towards the plight of old media journalists, and his examination remains rather superficial, though always interesting. Given the complexity of the subject matter, Page One acts as an intriguing front page to a subject that needs some serious, in-depth reporting.
But with such an old-school bias, David Carr may attract more followers than Page One’s overall philosophy.