Fro our final lecture this year, we watched a preview screening of the documentary Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times. The documentary covered a wide range of stories and the way they are researched and presented internally, including the Wikileaks release of diplomatic press cables, the management crisis at
The Tribune Company, and more.
I found the documentary, while completely adequate as a study of the NYT's internal processes, was even more interesting as a case study of a few of the more colourful employees at the newspaper company. In particular, the Media columnist David Carr was an extremely interesting character; having overcome drug addiction in his youth to end up the journalists' journalist at (arguably) the world's most important newspaper, Carr was an interesting combination of gruff, no-nonsense conversational style and an idealistic - almost romantic - view on the way the world should be.
The documentary also had a couple of valid points on the ongoing debate into the long-term legitimacy of print journalism. An interesting point I had not considered before. Many of the sites that we get our news off for free currently are indexes or regurgitations of the NYT's (and others') paid for journalism. This introduces somewhat of a paradox to the news argument: can we only get news for free if someone else, somewhere, is paying?
