Page One: how American press won't give up

There is not a better way to feel good about the national traditional press than seeing what's happening at one of the most prominent respected newspaper in the country. There is not a better way for a journalist to feel good about his/her job than seeing what goes into a real hard-core journalistic work at a newspaper that's "produced" some of the best journalists in the country.

If you agree, than you, as myself, looked forward to the release of "Page One: Inside The New York Times" - a documentary about the newspaper and the people who put it together.

The film came out as an answer to the mainstream expectations and market predictions that traditional press is dying out. It's dying out because of the overwhelming existence of the digital and online media sources. While just a decade ago, people preferred to get their press via old fashioned mail - in paper - right before their morning java, nowadays, many people get their news online - at home and on the go - thanks for all the mobile gadgets of the likes of iPhone, iPad and such. And that took many prominent American press outlets out of the business....along with them, many journalists and newspaper staff members lost jobs.

In this documentary, we meet (and as for me, put faces together with the stories and reports I've been following for so long at The New York Times) the people behind the Page One - editors, investigative correspondents, media writers, and such. We meet the ones who have been continuously putting the newspaper on the map above all over print publications. We meet the correspondents who go out of their way to bring the most controversial news in front of us every morning. These journalists go to Iraq to report on the ground, these journalists make a deal with Julian Assange to put the WikiLeaks documents first and foremost to tell the truth to a regular Joe about the war in Iraq. They solely owned investigation of the Watergate scandal. These guys were the first to tell the truth about what was going on behind the media mogul The Tribune Company and reveal the wrong doings of its management. And yes - sometimes they were sued.

David Carr. Follow him on Twitter here.

This documentary is an amazing view "behind-the-scenes" of The New York Times where the editors and writers argue with the new comers of the likes of Gawker, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and prove them wrong over and over again that the traditional press is dying out. Aren't those online media aggregators are just the aggregators of the "best of the best" news from the likes of NYT? Yes, they are. Besides, even if they tend to report faster than a traditional newspaper - none of those new media outlets have the means, the guts and the talents to pull off a real investigative material - they can report fast on the Arnold Schwarzenegger's affair, but they are not capable of providing with the information on where, what, how and who else was involved the same way as The New York Times can do... And that's the fucking difference. That's the reason why still so many people subscribe to the newspaper.

Aside from the fact that this movie boosts optimism about the fate of traditional media, it also makes a journalist (like myself) feel proud about the work that REAL kind of journalists do, because, to tell you the truth, there aren't many good journalists left. Most of the correspondents who call themselves that, are people who take a news of someone else, adapt it and presented it as if he/she reported on it the first. Not to mention about so many mediocre characters who consider it a job to provide a story, which facts are not checked, which characters are not real and/or which has no bone to it to make it interesting, revealing, and most importantly - newsworthy...And there are a lot of such journalists, because now each blogger thinks that he/she can write for The Huffington Post, and only A FEW - can write for The New York Times.

Bill Keller, Executive Editor of Page One

The movie "Page One:...", directed by Andrew Rossi, is utterly about the struggle of the real journalism to survive all the online "beasts", most of which have nothing to do with the press. But The NYT is set to survive in the age of the Internet - and the people behind it like executive editor, Bill Keller, media columnist and reporter David Carr and NYT Baghdad Bureau Chief Tim Arango will make sure of it.

PAGE ONE: Inside the New York Times
Directed by Andrew Rossi; written by Kate Novack and Mr. Rossi; director of photography, Mr. Rossi; edited by Chad Beck, Christopher Branca and Sarah Devorkin; music by Paul Brill; produced by Ms. Novack, Mr. Rossi, Josh Braun, David Hand, Alan Oxman and Adam Schlesinger; released by Magnolia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. 

Now plays in New York and Washington, DC.