It's hardly new to kick newspapers around for being slow or inept at embracing new technologies. But Page One makes a much needed counterargument - these technology companies are also in the journalism business. Or at least they should be.
Times Reporter David Carr - the real star of the film - responds by showing the Newser front page with every piece of content gathered from a traditional news agency cut-out, leaving just a page full of holes. In another clip, David Simon points out he's never seen a reporter from the Huffington Post at a Baltimore Zoning Board meeting.
But the real argument for the relevance of the journalist comes from watching the entire machine of the New York Times. Editors stay long into the night debating the relevance of a story, is the angle right, is it even a story at all? These are conversations I recognize from my days in newspaper, but it's a side of the job not often seen.
Contrasting this is the office of aggregator Gawker, where writers gather around the "big board" - a screen which constantly updates with the top ten stories readers are viewing. The implication is to serve the audience by scrambling to give them what they want, to grab clicks with headlines that play into common search terms, etc.
In a Q&A after the screening at True/False, David Carr said that the Times is becoming more like Gawker, and Gawker is becoming more like the Times. Perhaps modern news reporting is one part journalism and one part technology. But the technology side has taken a lot of credit in recent years, and reveled in kicking the journalists while they're down. Score this one for the journalists.
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