Tag: newspapers

The Post

Ready Player One took my esteem for Spielberg down a notch, but The Post—made after Ready Player One but released before it—has elements of his best work, even if it doesn’t rise above the sum of its parts. Generally it’s standard Spielberg, with old-school liberal and institutionalist views on the press, akin to Lincoln in its reverence for American mythologies. But cinematically it’s much more robust and limber than a lot of his recent stuff, with closely observed moments like the shot of Bob Odenkirk’s reporter character typing at his desk as the Washington Post‘s printing press rumbles to life in a climactic moment. I think the lack of prep time did him good.

Also, I am 99% sure Tom Hanks did this movie because of all the typewriters. Working with Spielberg and Meryl Streep was merely a bonus.

May 24, 2018 Add Comment

Obit

Obit is an eloquent, observant, and superbly crafted documentary by Vanessa Gould on the New York Times obituary writers and the people they cover.

One of the writers says writing obits isn’t sad because they are writing mostly about a person’s life rather than their death. I can see why that would be the case, but in spotlighting their subjects from over the years—including well-known ones like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams and ones unknown to me like William Wilson and Elinor Smith—the film made me as a viewer grieve all over again. It felt a lot like a memorial service: celebratory, but with an undercurrent of grief. I think of the Japanese concept of mono no aware: the awareness of the transience of things. Or as Wikipedia puts it, “a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.”

But it’s the writers themselves who are the subjects of the film, and they are as articulate, quirky, and wry as you’d expect NYT veteran writers to be. Kudos to them for their work, which I ought to seek out more. The literal deadlines they are faced with seem like a case of “take your time, hurry up”. One minute they could be working on an advance obit for someone who could die at any time (Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush come to mind), and the next minute word of Michael Jackson’s death arrives and they are 4 hours from print deadline. What a job!

There’s also Jeff Roth, the lone caretaker of the “morgue”, the Times‘s underground archive of historical news clippings, photographs, and other archival material, all stored in rows and rows of filing cabinets and bankers boxes. It’s an historian’s dream: oodles of material to look through, organized enough but not too much to allow for serendipity to strike. He and the Morgue are probably a documentary in themselves.

Gould’s cameras eavesdrop among the warren of cubicles in the Obit section, with longer than expected takes just watching the writers type at their computers and capturing their asides and narrated thoughts about where they are in the process. The slick editing certainly has something to do with it, but it’s the rare instance of the writing process being just as interesting as the writing itself.

Obit pairs well with Life Itself, the documentary about Roger Ebert, which is itself a kind of advance obituary on Ebert. Through his writing Ebert captured the lives of those on screen with a combination of strength and tenderness. The writers in Obit aren’t nearly as famous as he was, but their work is just as salutary to the soul.

August 24, 2017 2 Comments

A Reader’s Guide to ‘Back to the Future’

I noticed a motif of paper, reading, and the written word throughout the Back to the Future trilogy. Perhaps that’s much more common in movies set in pre-Internet times, but I thought it was especially prevalent in the Holy Trilogy.

(Tap/click photos to enlarge)

Part I:

Part 2:

Part 3:

October 21, 2015 Add Comment

Area Man Sad

I could see it coming, but I read the news about The Onion ceasing all print publication with sadness.

Growing up in Madison, the Onion‘s hometown, and now living in Chicago, its current headquarters, I’ve had easy access to the weekly editions. Lately my Onion diet has been exclusively online, so the print copy is hardly essential to the reading experience. But I’ve often grabbed a copy before hopping on the L or the bus, which allowed me to read through whole articles rather than simply skimming the headlines, and to enjoy the little bits you don’t get online.

To go tangential: Like most younger folks these days, I get pretty much all my non-satirical news online. Really, the only time I pick up a newspaper is at my parents’ house, and that’s usually for the crossword. If I’m at the doctor’s office or the bookstore I’ll eagerly devour a print magazine, if only because I’m less liable to become distracted than if I were to read it online, just a tab away from another distracting Internet nugget (Internugget?).

But besides books (no thanks, e-readers) and the occasional magazine, I’m a largely paperless information consumer. I’m OK with that, but that doesn’t mean I won’t miss carrying The Onion with me.

I’ll have onion in my dinner tonight, in loving memory.

November 8, 2013

Murdoch Expands His Mega Media Empire

Published in the North Central Chronicle on September 14, 2007.

First published in 1889, the Wall Street Journal has won countless Pulitzer Prizes and worldwide acclaim for its quality reporting and editorials. It also was the first news outlet to report Enron’s financial disaster, as well as the Sept. 11 attacks. So what lies ahead for such a highly regarded and successful newspaper?

Rupert Murdoch buys it.

That’s right. The same man who owns American Idol, Fox News Channel and MySpace now owns one of the most prestigious names in U.S. news – possibly the world. The average citizen, however, may see nothing wrong with this. After all, we live in a capitalist society. Aren’t businesses allowed to grow?

In fact, the buyout of the Wall Street Journal illustrates the very thing that’s wrong with our capitalist society and our democracy. We’re much more interested in making a buck than preserving our sacred constitutional rights. But hey, if one man can afford to own dozens of newspapers, cable channels, magazines, a film studio and two publishing companies, what’s the sense in stopping him from buying more? Why even fight it?

What most people fail to grasp is that when media businesses merge, a voice in the media is lost. Pretty soon, when most mainstream media outlets are owned by just a few corporations as they are now, there are few remaining independent, credible voices left. This is when our basic right to information starts to diminish.

We all have a right to truth from the media. James Madison, Founding Father and architect of the U.S. Constitution, said that “a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Essentially, we need a free press. In order for this country to survive this crazy thing we call politics, we need to know what’s going on. Fox News and CNN, the two highest rated and well-known cable news outlets, can’t tell you whole truths because their bosses depend on an uninformed public that is not willing to step up and force change.

But here is the truth: The only thing stopping this country from becoming an even greater nation is the people itself. We are apathetic, unaware and unwilling to force our media and our country to serve the basic rights of its citizens, rather than the greed of its stockholders.

Democracy and capitalism can work well together – so long as they keep each other in check. Our democracy may be the most bragged about democracy in the world, but that doesn’t make it the best. Right now, our capitalism is beating the hell out of our democracy. And Murdoch’s latest move is just kicking democracy while it’s down.

The Wall Street Journal buyout should be a wake up call to all Americans who love their country. We can’t see the truth about the Iraq War, global warming, the 2008 Presidential election or concentrated ownership in the media if the media moguls are consistently pulling the wool over our eyes. Do yourself a favor and open your eyes and see for yourself.

February 1, 2008 Add Comment