Film 'Page One': Critical Response

“Page One” Critical Response
At first, watching the documentary “Page One”, I was drawn to the different personal stories of the people, particularly David Carr and his entrancing prose. Next, though, I was captivated from the perspective of the journalism world’s view on major events that I was already familiar with. From the release of WikiLeaks’s video on YouTube (which I found was interesting the documentary failed to mention the name of the video “Collateral Murder”) to the economic crisis that led to many businesses and newspapers shutting down for good. From the first time I looked for a rental on Craigslist to the first job I found on Monster to most recently the car I found and purchased on a dealer’s website instead of looking in
the classifieds for any of those things, I like many had begun to wonder if journalism was dead. If someone had asked me two years ago, I would have said it was dying. It seemed as if between the economic crisis and the advent of Twitter and even WikiLeaks that traditional journalism and print newspaper had resisted the change of how citizens received their news, and thus failed to evolve with the times. Journalism was ignoring the social media and internet aspect of getting news out into the universe. It seemed that for all intents and purposes journalism was dead, and even those at the New York Times feared the worst during forced layoffs and the shuttering of other newspapers. Those behind “Page One” seemed to share those fears, even if some, like David Carr, weren’t phased by the likelihood of the end of journalism. However, now as I type this I follow most major newspapers on Twitter, have subscribed to digital editions of their papers, and find journalism to be flourishing more than ever during this interesting new juxtaposition of politics and internet media. It’s safe to say journalism isn’t dead but instead is a phoenix rising from the ashes of a once great empire to the new world of internet and right now news.