I recently re-watched the 1994 film, “The Paper.” I hadn’t seen the movie in many years, but probably saw it half a dozen times in the late 1990s. Most viewings came from a VHS tape rented from the gas station near my childhood home before I left to major in print journalism at an affordable college. These universally outdated conditions might explain my nostalgia for a 30-year-old movie about the newspaper industry that existed before cell phones and widespread layoffs.
There’s no particular reason you should remember “The Paper.” Director Ron Howard depicts the madcap antics of a fast-talking big city newspaper editor (Michael Keaton) trying to get a story right while navigating pressure from his chain-smoking bosses. Several other characters enter the story, each more eccentric and chain-smoking than the next. It’s the quintessential three-star movie — three and a half if you once worked at a newspaper, two and a half if you didn’t.
Looking back, it’s clear that this film helped inspire my career path. After college, I quickly found a job in my hometown’s small daily newspaper and, in a bizarre twist, became managing editor soon after. It was then I learned that several key details in the movie were inaccurate.
For instance, in “The Paper,” two reporters fight to cover the same big story, each believing they would do a better job. In real life, one reporter is assigned two big stories and is offered comp time they can never take. Our newsroom staffed half as many reporters as just 20 years earlier. Today, the paper no longer exists.
A big plot point in the movie comes when the metro editor gets to yell the old cliché, “Stop the presses!” He and his boss fight over whether to start or stop the presses, while the burly printers stand by in confusion.
In real life, had I told the print technicians to stop the presses, they would have killed me with a shovel. When the publisher went to check on me, and saw my blood-soaked corpse, the pressmen would say that I died of natural causes. And the publisher would accept this because they could bump up quarterlies by slow-walking the hiring of my replacement.
That’s why I kept my mouth shut about the presses, which is how a local veteran was surprised to learn about his service in “Operation Dessert Storm.”
Anyway, even in the early 2000s, the printing press was rarely located in the same building as the newsroom anymore. At the old Hibbing Daily Tribune, we sent our final edition to the press electronically. A van went to retrieve the newspapers when they were ready. One day, someone stole the van and took it on a joy ride, dumping the papers along the back roads. This was before smart phones and social media. We had a website, but most people weren’t reading it yet. So, an entire day’s work was lost. No news that day.
Another feature of the “The Paper” was an eccentric, paranoid newspaper columnist played by Randy Quaid. He spends most of the movie sleeping off a hangover on the editor’s couch, emerging like a boiled owl after dark to squabble with a local politician. This is … not entirely wrong … but I’ve learned you don’t have to drink to be a good columnist. You just need two or three ideas in the hopper and a persistent fantasy that your thoughts are important.
Two things saddened me while rewatching “The Paper.” First, the movie depicts police officers and reporters actually talking to each other, sharing information and trying to get crime stories right. In today’s highly politicized environment, mutual distrust prevents the kind of sourcing you used to see. In fact, anti-media sentiment has made it harder for reporters to get stories right, creating a sort of doom loop.
Second, the movie’s depiction of women presents as a prehistoric fossil worthy of study. Here, men are depicted as “real” journalists, free of responsibility for their actions at home or office. Gender stereotypes abound. The metro editor’s wife (Marissa Tomei) is a competent former reporter who shares her husband’s ambition and career goals. But because she’s female and pregnant, she is often depicted as a nag. Glenn Close’s character, the managing editor, isn’t treated much better by screenwriters. It’s a bad look that I didn’t notice at first.
Despite its flaws, I still decided to write about this three-decade-old movie that only reporters seem to remember. Why? Because it reminded me of how exciting it is to find things out. That’s fundamentally what the news business should be. If you want to know what’s going on, you have to be curious.
The central plot of “The Paper” — trying to get a wrong story right — reflects the same challenge facing journalism, and society at large.
Each of us may use curiosity and critical thinking skills to determine what’s going on. Spending less time on our smartphones and more time talking to a wider variety of people is still the best strategy for journalists and non-journalists alike.
Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and co-hosts the podcast “Power in the Wilderness” on Northern Community Radio. This piece first appeared in the Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024 edition of the Mesabi Tribune.
Talking to people is important, and filing data requests is more important, when it comes to finding things out.