So I just stumbled over “The Paper” on cable, a wonderful comedy/drama with Michael Keaton and Glenn Close made back in 1994. And in watching it, I was struck again by just how much the world has changed in a mere 20 years.
The climax of the film (it’s two decades old; deal with the spoilers) hinges on the fact that the newspaper has a front page headline that subsequent investigation reveals to be false. Keaton’s character stops the presses so it can replated and changed (thus exonerating two black youths falsely accused of a crime) but Close’s character, the EIC, starts the paper up again and fires Keaton’s character. Later on, though, she has a change of heart, stops the press herself and has it fixed to run the correct headline. Presumably she swallows the expense of destroying the already published newspapers so that they can get it correct.
And as I watched it, I realized that would never happen today. They would send out the incorrect newspaper so they wouldn’t incur the expense of the unused papers, but they would immediately update the website. The printed paper would seem an interesting but inaccurate sidelight while the online version would be out there with the correct story. End of problem.
Kind of kills the drama.
PAD
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“Stop the upload!” Yeah, that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
You have to think of it as a period piece, set in its time.
What also dates the movie:
Randy Quaid as a serious actor.
(/cheap shot)
Back in the ’90s, I thought Randy Quaid’s multiple roles as a crotchety, snarky, middle-aged conspiracy nut were fun and hilarious (“The Paper” is one of my favorite movies of all time, and Quaid was one of the unforgettable highlights of “Independence Day”).
Then came “Hollywood Star Whackers,” and squatting in his guest house, and escaping to Canada, and Dog the Bounty Hunter . . . and I realized it wasn’t an act, he really was that crazy.
Not sure if that makes his old roles funnier or sadder in hindsight.
Alternatively today, you would have the owner of the paper (and many more papers, and a cable news network) insist that rather than correcting the false accusation of the two black youths, the paper should double-down on accusing the two “thugs”. “Our readers don’t care about ‘facts’; that’s a lamestream media concept!”
Reporter here, and we would stop it if we could. Despite the general public’s opinion, if there was still time to catch it, we’d stop it because it was wrong (and P.S. litigious). We’d also blast it across the website, and if there was a previous online version with the wrong info, we’d pull it with an explanation and correction. For more details on best practices, see the Society of Profesional Joirnalists’ Code of Ethics on SPJ.org. The Paper is a period piece, in that the sole focus is on the printed edition and the internet is still a sleeping infant, but it is highly accurate in almost every other respect (though we rarely have columnists firing handguns in the office).
As someone who works in the industry, thanks for that depressing but not inaccurate thought.
Wasn’t Glenn Close the managing editor, or is that the same thing as being EIC?
The central conflicts of lots of period pieces fall apart in the face of modern technology. It’s somewhat deflating to watch an old movie where all the tension would evaporate if the main character had a cell phone.
What’s more interesting and entertaining I think is to watch old movies set in the future that fail to anticipate technological advances that again render the central conflict superfluous.