Page One examines changing times at America's greatest newspaper in the digitalage

It’s not exactly front-page news anymore that traditional media — specifically, media of the old-fangled, ink-on-paper sort — face daunting financial challenges in a digital era when even many of the most respected and (until fairly recently) widely read newspapers in this country are struggling for survival.

Indeed, you don’t have to be a diehard news junkie or a media industry analyst to have figured out on your own, long ago, that for a variety of reasons — many, but certainly not all, having to do with competition from easily accessible, constantly updated and absolutely free news sources available on the Internet — newspapers are shrinking, downsizing and otherwise diminishing. All you have to do is pick up the wafer-thin Houston Chronicle tossed onto your front lawn on a Monday or Tuesday morning — assuming, of course, you still subscribe to the hometown newspaper — to recognize that things ain’t like they used to be, and probably won’t ever be again.

Still, it’s altogether possible that the best newspapers staffed with the brightest talents will survive — and maybe even thrive — if the folks in charge keep providing what only newspapers can provide, and then provide even more by cannily exploiting the immediacy and ubiquity of the new media. At least, that’s one of the underlying messages of Page One: Inside the New York Times, a surprisingly compelling and unfashionably encouraging documentary that will have its H-Town premiere Thursday through Labor Day at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Filmmaker Andrew Rossi managed to gain unprecedented access to the day-to-day inner workings of America’s greatest newspaper, and chose to focus primarily — appropriately — on the paper’s relatively new media desk. Throughout 2008, he followed editor Bruce Headlam, reporter David Carr and other Times staffers as they maintained a delicate balance between covering breaking news — most notably, the bankruptcy of the Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other prominent papers — and mastering the new media methods of transmitting that news.

A few days ago, Rossi called to tell some of the stories behind his story.

CultureMap: One of many topics touched upon in Page One is the blurring of boundaries between traditional media journalists and new media journalists. I mean, these days, there’s no such thing as a journalist whose work — reportage, feature writing, movie reviews, whatever — appears exclusively in print media. Right?

Andrew Rossi: I think that’s a good point, especially to the extent that you see a lot of journalists at The New York Times producing blog posts as well as articles. The journalism in each might exist at different standard levels only because of timing. Take Media Decoder — which is the blog I got to know the most while following the media desk. They might put some reports there that are less cooked than they are when they’re in print.

But I think that people like David Carr or Brian Stelter or Tim Arango, three of the writers we follow in the film — they are journalists online just as much as they are journalists in the paper. Because the platform that delivers their writing can be either.

Now, on the other hand, I think there are some organizations, because their DNA is exclusively new media or on line — they just have a different perspective on the work that they’re doing. And it could be said that the journalists who are working there are somewhat different.

So if you look at ProPublica — which you see in the film, and is a perfect hybrid — you’ll see that Paul Steiger, who runs it, is a former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, and is among the most dyed-in-the wool traditional media journalists. But he’s now running an organization that lives online, that doesn’t have to pay for the delivery trucks and the paper. And he’s editing and assigning stories that, to hear him tell it, he could have never devoted resources to back when he was running The Wall Street Journal.

In fact, he actually believes he couldn’t have done it at any paper that exists for profit. But ProPublica is a non-profit corporation.

CM: You mentioned David Carr — the former cocaine addict who bounced back from rock bottom to become a media reporter at the New York Times. As a documentarian, when you encounter a colorful character like him, don’t you feel like going to church and lighting a candle to express your gratitude?

AR: [Laughs] I met David when I made my last film, Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven, for HBO. We got to be friends after he had a cameo in that film. And when he told me that he was writing an autobiography about his — quote, unquote — textured life, I immediately made a mental note that this was a person who would really be able to carry a film. He’s got that sort of cinematic breadth of emotion and personal history. And he’s just wickedly smart and funny.

So, yes, it would be safe to say that I thanked the documentary gods when he came in my view.

CM: Of course, when you’re covering so many different subjects in a multifaceted documentary like Page One, don’t you really need someone like David Carr to hold our attention and serve as a guide?

AR: Definitely. In fact, I would say David emerges as sort of a Virgil in Dante’s Inferno: He’s taking us through the various circles of media hell. And he’s explaining everything for the viewer. Not always while directly addressing the camera, or through voiceover, but just through his daily slog through the newsroom. And out in the public, where people are constantly attacking traditional media, attacking the Times.

You don’t necessarily have to always agree with everything that David says. But he does certainly give voice to a lot of perspective that I think sort of gets drowned out when a lot of new media gurus argue that the sort of traditional journalism practiced by the Times is not ... well, you know…

CM: Relevant?

AR: Exactly.

CM: One of the most memorable scenes in Page One is Carr’s encounter with the young turks at Vice magazine. They start out trying to dis the New York Times by claiming they’ve been providing better reports on dire conditions in Liberia. And Carr flames them: “Just because you put on a fucking safari hat and looked at poop doesn’t give you the right to attack what we do.” And, yeah, he’s right.

AR: Which is not to say, of course, that Vice doesn’t do great video storytelling of a certain kind that attracts a certain audience. They should be congratulated for that, because I think they are. In fact, if you look at the story that David wrote about Vice, which we see a little snapshot of in the film, it’s a sort of glowing story — not only bemusedly looking at why would CNN would be partnering with Vice, but also I think tipping its hat at Vice for being able to capture an audience of young people, and deliver to them news and information about things other than video games.

But, all that being said, I think that as David argues with Shane Smith, that doesn’t mean they can turn back and criticize the Times for never covering war zones or places where genocide is taking place. Because, in fact, the Times has been doing that in places like Rwanda and the Sudan.

CM: Of course, for all their feudin’ and fussin’ and fightin’ — the old media fogeys and the new media gonzos ultimately are after the same thing, bringing info to people. Yet Page One indicates there’s still something of a divide between the two camps.

AR: Well, if you look at something like Twitter as an information delivery vehicle — David Carr totally embraces Twitter. In fact, he now has over 300,000 Twitter followers. He’s a ferocious presence on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean that the journalism institutions that are providing a lot of the link bait on Twitter — the things that people are actually clicking through to, and are allowing people to create their own great Tweets — should be done away with.

It’s not an either/or situation. Again, I think the future points to hybrid delivery vehicles that are powered by on-line amplification, but also rely upon the nuts and bolts of old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground type of reporting.

CM: But there’s the rub: Up until now, traditional media organizations had the advantage of being able draw on greater financial resources to fund more expansive news coverage. Looks like that may change, and not necessarily for the better.

AR: That’s very true. Page One is capturing a very specific moment in time when the traditional model of the Tiffany’s ad on the top right-hand corner of page three of the paper is in peril of becoming extinct. The amount of money that’s being paid for that ad, the incredibly profitable margin on that ad, had not yet emerged in an analogous fashion on the website, or even on the iPad.

[Page One] is capturing this moment when many institutions that cannot bridge the gap, or figure out alternative sources of income, are actually going out of business. And it’s trying to sort of flag this moment, and hopefully inform viewers about this problem and create a conversation about what they find important.

(Page One: Inside the New York Times will screen at 7 p.m. Thursday and Sunday, 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Monday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.)