Commentary on Page One...

Inside the New York Times.

The death of print is near. So says the voices of media institutions world-over, particularly those that have already been put out of business. Page One: Inside the New York Times has a look into these deaths, and takes us behind the scenes of what appears to be a journalistically strong newspaper, one that has a socially-prevalent history, The New York Times.

It was an aesthetically pleasing documentary. It was engaging. This was lucky as I had to spend my leisure time on a public holiday watching it. No harm done: I love hearing about the impending doom of my field of work. But not really. But at the same time it is quite thrilling. 

We've been hearing about it for years: people aren't reading newspapers anymore. When you have access to the same information online immediately, and for FREE, why would you pay tomorrow for something you could have known about long before everyone else. This is why I love Twitter: instant access to breaking news. So we hear a lot about how no one wants to spend money when it's not necessary...

... but this does come at the cost of the quality of journalism. How can you expect a 100% accurate and fully comprehensive story within a few minutes of the event occurring? That is what we expect. In this "Now Generation", we want to know straight away what has happened, like tsunamis in Japan, and the Boston bombings. What I did like was a blow-by-blow account of what was happening on the ground, by one of the online newspapers, but that is still more like Twitter than longer-form journalism, which I would agree is dying out as well, as our attention spans become shorter, and more and more things are competing for that limited attention. 

So "wat do" now? I guess we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps by the time I join the ranks of those cut-throat journos, the likes of David Carr, these problems will have sorted themselves out. Speaking of whom, that man has quite the personality, and I would not like to be on the receiving end of one of his interrogations. 

This was definitely a documentary worth watching. Even if it does tell me that a potential career path of mine is going to peter out and die. That's okay, though, at least I have the Internets to keep me busy. I am an online writer now. I have no fear.