We saw State of Play last night with Russell Crowe and I was reminded of All the President's Men and how scary Washington DC seemed in those movies. Like all reporters hang out in parking lots at night scared of shadows and secrets.and in Russell Crowe's case, guns.
The most haunting line in the movie was Helen Mirren's. Paraphrasing: The story here isn't the takeover of homeland security by private industry but that this newspaper is dying.
Everyday now I have people ask me with a worried expression if I still have a job and if the paper's going to make it. Some expect its demise having read the stories and seen the paper shrink in size and page count.
I watched the end of the movie with the credits rolling as the headlines on Crowe's front-page story appears rolling off the presses. I saw the little robots put on the big rolls of newsprint and was reminded of our Deer Valley plant and how impressive those robots seemed and how modern given they replaced pressmen who had previously rolled those huge rolls on and off the massive Goss presses. Now those robots seemed quaint and antiquated and something that I would have to explain to my grandchildren since a newspaper could, unimaginably, be something that might need explanation like a teletype or a tickertape parade or a milkman has to be explained to youngsters today.
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3 comments:
I love your take on this movie -- the thoughts that you had after seeing it. Now I want to see it, too. Bonnie
Me too - you make me want to see it.
And I want newspapers to stay with us forever.
Change is hard when you can't imagine what the future is going to look like
I remember watching men roll out the paper at The Arizona Republic in downtown Phoenix. I was girl on a tour watching them work. It was loud, dramatic, hard work. The industry is changing. What's next?
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