“Page One: Inside the New York Times” is a documentary about how the New York times has been able to survive through the digital age. A time where advertising in newspapers has disappeared resulting in many papers going bankrupt. Also, people want information yesterday and they want it for free. The documentary shows the process a story goes through to make it in the New York Times and compares that to how quickly a story can be posted online. Online, someone hears about something headline worthy, types it up and posts it for everyone to see. As compared to the New York Times, the story has to be heard, all the correct facts need to be collected, the story then needs to be typed properly, it then gets edited and re-edited. Then finally the story goes to the a meeting where the heads from each section debate on which stories will be put on the next day’s paper. This method has pros and cons. A pro would be that for a reputable paper like the New York Times, it should be a garuantee that all the facts are correct and the story is properly reported. However this is not always the case; before the war in Iraq, Judy Miller wrongly reported the details about Iraq having weapons of mass distruction as well as other misreportings. A con to this method is that not every story that someone would want to read is published. However this also works adversely for online media. Due to the volume of stories published online, many are lost in the feed and not seen by the public.
The documentary then talks about why print media like the New York Times is so vital. People who work for the Times were filmed talking about how they will never see a media outlet like the Huffington Post publish an article about a town board meeting. Media is now being dominated by a few giant places or individual,independent journalists; neither of which would care about a town board meeting. However there are readers who want to know what happened in that meeting and without the local papers, there is a chance that information like that may be lost.
The film then shows the impact of Wikileaks, a website that leaks government information for the good of the public. They showed how Wikileaks has manipulated information to better fit their agenda. They showed a video of the United States attacking in Iraq and framing so it looked like the United States was in the wrong. This could be described as dirty journalism, something the New York Times stays away from however the public see the story and react. They have a low media literacy and because of that, they do not make the right judgements about what they are seeeing and reading.
Online media has brought us closer than ever to events worldwide. However it is also removing us from what is close to that, and people who work for companies like the New York Times are trying to keep that preserved.
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