News never die
Page One is a documentary film on one of America’s most venerated media institutions—The New York Times, taking viewers inside the newsroom to see how the Times adapt to the transformation of a media landscape fraught with perils and opportunities.
It covers many stories and issues covered by the newspaper in the 2000s, including the Iraq War, the bankruptcy of the Tribune Company, and Wikileaks’ publication of the Afghan War logs, etc.
The film championed journalistic professionalism. When Wikileaks put the leak videos online, the Times reporters compared the original video with the online version, to ensure
Wikileaks didn’t distort the video to provoke the anger of the mass. When the National Broadcasting Company reported that all US troops withdrew from Iraq, the Times did its own cross checking and challenged the authenticity of this NBC news.
David Carr, a reporter of the Times’ media desk featured in the film, said: “Times is fully engaged in this revolution.” While maintaining its news reporting standard, Times started out to explore the business model of digital subscription — it sticks to producing in-depth investigative reports and gathering first-hand information from all over the world, and it also explores new forms of presenting news, such as video, online surveys, and virtual reality.
Ten years after the documentary was filmed, the New York Times added more than 1 million digital users in 2020. It is the best answer for that film—traditional news did not die, but grew more vigorously.
Nowadays, digital subscription is an important growth point in the media industry, making up for the gradual decline of advertising revenue. Page One shows a successful case of the integration of tradition and technology, and people’s demand for high-quality, original and independent news is and will be there for a long time.
