Lecture 12: Page One: Inside the New York Times



With the Internet surpassing print as our main news source, and newspapers going bankrupt, ... Page One chronicles the media industry’s transformation and assesses the high stakes for democracy ... The film deftly makes a beeline for the eye of the storm or, depending on how you look at it, the inner sanctum of the media, gaining unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom for a year. At the media desk, a dialectical play-within-a-play transpires as writers like salty David Carr track print journalism’s metamorphosis even as their own paper struggles to stay vital and solvent, publishing material from WikiLeaks and encouraging writers to connect more directly with their audience. Meanwhile, rigorous journalism—including vibrant cross-cubicle debate and collaboration, tenacious jockeying for on-record quotes, and skillful page-one pitching—is alive and well. The resources, intellectual capital, stamina, and self-awareness mobilized when it counts attest there are no shortcuts when analyzing and reporting complex truths.

Since the internet has developed dramatically, many newspaper organisations in US were bankrupt. Many people are worried New York Times and American journalism would come to an end very soon. In reality, the New York Times is badly affected by decreasing subscriptions and advertisement revenues. Nowadays, people can easily get plenty of free information and news from the internet. Internet can be seen as a threat to the newspaper organisations. However, at the same time, the New York Times also used internet as a new platform to report news. People can now read the news on the website of New York Times. If readers want to read all articles or get more news stories, they have to pay money. That means some newspaper organisations start charging the online readers for the purpose of surviving in the industry. Page One: Inside the New York Times is a good documentary to give a summary on how media works today and how media face challenges and difficulties in this internet era.