Review of Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011) by Chris Z — 29 May 2011

This needed to be a significantly better documentary than it was. Sloppy technique and execution all the way around. And a wandering and incoherent focus to the structure of the film. This is too scattered to be welcoming to people who don't consume much news and don't really know the backgrounds of the various stories that are more central (Wikileaks, Judith Miller, Zell & Tribune, etc) but is far too cursory and superficial to be revelatory to any regular readers of The Times.

David Carr steals the show by being the fantastic character of himself, but ultimately this is a really lackluster documentary. This is a film that didn't bite of too much so much as clearly never had a focused objective, hence ended up being a collage of disjointed meanderings about The New York Times in the context of major shifts in media and news.

But that context is never explored in any significant detail, there is very little in the way of analysis or figures or information. And the film also fails as an attempt (as described by its byline of being the "inside story") of being any kind of real exploration into the intricacies of one of the most powerful and prestigious news rooms in the world.

Worth seeing, sure, but the more I think about it, the more this feels like a really early draft cut of a film that is still being made. This either needed to be a deep inside scoop of The Times, or it needed to be a business and news exploration of The Times in the context of shifting media and the dissolution of the gatekeepers and the replacement of hard news sources with the facade of aggregators.

Unfortunately, this film is neither. Basically, this film needed to be made by smarter people with a superior perspective.