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Spending the evening watching the 1994 movie The Paper for the first time. I'm frankly impressed by how well it has captured life in a newsroom. The paper-ridden desks, office gossip, interpersonal relations, it all feels very real.
At the morning news meeting of this New York City paper, the foreign editor runs down news stories about violent acts abroad and notes at the end whether anyone involved was from New York. Accurate. We love to needlessly localize stories.
In the busy newsroom, an editor (Clint Howard) asks no one in particular what the plural is for ultimatum. Accurate. This is all copy editors do.
The managing editor (Glenn Close) is having an affair. Accurate. Newsrooms are incestuous marriage destroyers.
The metro editor (Michael Keaton) has an interview for a job at the more prestigious newspaper uptown. The manager there makes condescending comments about his "cute" newspaper. Accurate. We look down on lesser papers while stealing their best talent.
One guy in the newsroom argues for a $600 ergonomic chair. He eventually gets it approved and puts a "do not touch" sign on it. Accurate. We are always stealing each other's chairs.
Just about everyone in the newsroom has loose ties and ill-fitting clothes. Accurate. People in print newsrooms look like crap unless they have reason not to.
Keaton spends most of the evening obsessing about some crime story, blowing off dinner with his wife and parents. But he only works with the columnist writing the story at the end of the night. This makes no sense.
Keaton and his boss argue over whether to stop a press run because their front-page story is wrong. Accurate. The dispute devolves into violence in the press room. Inaccurate. Violent fights over coverage are reserved for managers' offices.
Photographer sent to cover a perp walk can't break through a wall of other photojournalists and TV reporters and comes back to the newsroom to develop her photos praying she got anything in focus. Painfully accurate.
Metro newspaper's daily deadline is 8pm and apparently it only has one edition. Inaccurate. But the deadline is blown by several hours, so maybe they just say the deadline is 8pm.
Final verdict: exaggerated, but they got a lot of the little things right. Would recommend.
"Who the hell stole my stapler?" Accurate.
Overuse of the vending machine: Accurate.
Debating whether front page headline should have an exclamation mark or question mark: Accurate.
Everyone's at the same bar after their shift: Accurate.
Overuse of the vending machine: Accurate.
Debating whether front page headline should have an exclamation mark or question mark: Accurate.
Everyone's at the same bar after their shift: Accurate.
"You're not a columnist, you're a reporter who writes long." If you don't think this is accurate, it's because you're one of these.
