What to see this weekend: 'Page One: Inside the New York Times'

By Sarah Sluis

The thing about the reviews of Page One: Inside the New York Times is that they all come from within the publishing industry. It's not such a stretch of the imagination to believe that people in the newspaper/magazine/blogosphere would be bowled over by a documentary about the Gray Lady. So you'll have to trust me on this one: Page One is a documentary worth seeing, whether you're in the business or not.

Writer/director Andrew Rossi captures that feeling of impending doom that had settled over the industry during the recession, when newspapers and magazines were dropping like flies. Now that the number of media casualties have diminished, it's curious to be brought back to that period, when the Seattle P-I and Rocky Mountain News went under. Rossi uses these outsider examples to contextualize. The real star of the movie is the Times itself, specifically the Media Desk, which covers the changes in the industry.

For the layperson who just enjoys reading the newspaper, the doc fills in a lot of the blanks about how a newspaper operates. Rossi reveals the sort-of-obvious fact that The New York Times tends to dictate content in newspapers across the country. I've always noticed that when I read other newspapers at home or while traveling, they'll often include stories I read a few days before in the Times. Beyond just syndication, the Times' opinions carry a measure of influence that can wield real power. Rossi touches upon Judith Miller's reportage, which conveyed information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that just wasn't true. Many blame Miller for creating a quorum of support for the Iraqi War.

The real star of the documentary, however, is David Carr. The onetime drug addict turned single parent and reporter knows how to cut through the crap, a skill that he shows off to great effect. This piece that he wrote about the Tribune Company led to the resignation of its leader, Randy Michaels. He's never fawning or sycophantic with his interview subjects. When interviewing the heads of Vice Magazine (piece here), he lashes out at them after they insult the Times, an altercation that NY Mag was nice enough to transcribe (trust me, it's more forceful on film). A number of reviews mention that moment, including Film Journal's.

Our critic Erica Abeel mentions that Rossi is "overly respectful," which is true. But perhaps that's what it took to get a look inside the newspaper. In an FJI interview with Rossi, he says he was able to get the go-ahead by sitting through "six months of meetings" and by "[pitching] it as an observational doc and...[communicating] that I had no agenda." While sometimes I wanted the documentary to have a stronger point-of-view, Page One's best moments are when a reporter is on the phone with a source, and an editor is putting the finishing touches on a story.