A wandering, unfocused approximation of a story in motion.
You write what you know. The internet. Daily deadlines that became hourly deadlines. Cutbacks and vanishing print circulation. The woman on the obits desk that they made redundant (her badge reads, ‘I’m not dead yet’). When you’re a reporter on the media desk of the New York Times you know these things. And you write about them.
Filmmaker Andrew Rossi spent 14 months with the staff on the media desk of the New York Times – following the story of the people writing about themselves. He was there as the NYT lost 30 percent of its revenue in the space of a year. He followed star reporters like David Carr – a crack addict turned super snoop – as they performed the fine work of print journalism: chasing leads, challenging testimony, breaking stories.
He filmed as these stories reached an audience of 900,000 through the paper. Then he filmed the NYT journalist’s reaction to the roughly edited Wikileaks 'Collatoral Murder' video (“They just dropped it off on YouTube and waited for everyone to find it”), which has clocked 11 million hits to date.
In a few decades time there will be a great documentary to be made about today’s print media. Right now, trying to capture the state of the industry on film is as futile as trying to report breaking news through print. It’s not Rossi’s fault that his doc’s focus is all over the place – he’s following the narrative thread of his subject, which leads to an analysis of the decline of traditional media. And an exposé on Julian Assange and Wikileaks. And a tutorial on the history of the New York Times. And a lesson on how a big news story is broken. All at the same time. Quickly. Now.
There’s no time for character, no time for contemplation. Just the steady trundle of a story playing itself out, and the desperate whir of Rossi’s camera trying to catch his little part of it. The result is patchy, intense and slightly humourless. A snapshot memorandum of an industry declining faster than film can track it.
The Gray Lady is a paper of note facing serious challenges from new media competitors.
A wandering, unfocused approximation of a story in motion.
It’s not Rossi’s fault that his medium can’t keep up with his story.
