New York Times: movie review

Does the notion of a documentary about a 160-year-old newspaper seem coma-inducing? Then think of "Page One: Inside the New York Times" as a High Noon shootout between a flawed hero and a nefarious, charismatic villain. The stakes: your right to reliable news.

In the white hat, David Carr, the pugnacious, foghorn-voiced star columnist for the Times' media desk. A rumpled master of the Lt. Columbo shuffle, he lulls his opponents into lowering their guard before plugging them between the eyes. Wearing black, Sam Zell, the Dr. Evil of print journalism. The predatory tycoon bought the faltering Tribune Co. (which controls some of the more influential papers in the country, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times) with money borrowed from the employees, stiffed 10,000 nonunion staffers with a worthless stock-ownership plan, and turned the staid Tribune into a frat house run by radio executives with the mentality of shock jocks and the social conscience of rabid weasels. The film documents the new owner's brainstorm that the Tribune should add a porn section to build circulation. As Zell steered the company into financial and ethical bankruptcy, he rewarded his 20 top cronies with $57 million in bonuses.

Carr unpacked this mess in a blockbuster 2010 article, one venerable media giant calling another to account in a manner that no squadron of bloggers could hope to copy.

How the Times achieves such reporting, while adapting to a perilous new world of declining circulation, layoffs and new digital life forms, is the story of "Page One." Director Andrew Rossi doesn't fulfill the year-in-the life promise his subtitle implies. The film's attention is whipsawed endlessly by breaking news developments. Boomeranging back to the media desk provides the film what little focus it has.

But giving so much of the movie over to Carr is, in a sense, a kind of abdication, since it also exposes how little else in "Page One" is galvanizing. The turmoil of the newspaper business in the age of the Internet, the seismic shifts in how we obtain and distribute news, the fate of serious journalism – all of this has been hashed over so many times that "Page One," with its parade of quizzical, platitudinous talking heads, adds little to the noise.

Rossi keeps bopping back and forth between scenes about WikiLeaks, Iraq, Comcast, ABC, Watergate, the iPad – you name it. What we don't get to see much of is anything at The Times outside of the media desk. Hardly a mention is made of the national or city news or foreign news desks, not to mention sports or entertainment, all of which might have been more enlivening than the media desk. (When I saw the film at Sundance, Carr said afterward, during a Q-and-A, that "We write about people who write about people who actually do things.")

We do get to sit in on a daily Page 1 meeting presided over by soon-to-be-stepping-down executive editor Bill Keller, but it's all too briefly glimpsed. Much bigger glimpses are provided of The Times's new Renzo Piano-designed headquarters. It's mighty impressive, even if you are aware of the fact that the paper, on shaky financial ground, sold and then leased back part of it in 2009. With all the talk in "Page One" about the demise of print journalism and the rise of new media, this shiny spacious emporium seems like both a beacon and a staggering folly. Grade: B- (Rated R for language including some sexual references.)