"The Paper" Film Review
10:49 AM |
| Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
By Kristen Watson
The Paper is a film about Penn State University's school
newspaper, The Daily Collegian and their
day-to-day workings. I think the film did a really good job showing all of
the different aspects of writing for a school publication. The stress, the
anger, the frustration.
The major issues presented in the
film were their declining readership, a non-diverse staff, and angry students,
issues many papers across the nation are dealing with today.
Getting in touch with and dealing
with sources is one of the main hurdles a journalist must jump through to get
anything done. At the Collegian, their journalists tackled this obstacle by
staying persistent, calling multiple times, using email and reassuring weary
sources that their participation and cooperation are important.
Journalists jobs require them to
serve the readers and not themselves and I think The Collegian did a pretty
good job of that. They pushed administrators for information, got the
interviews they needed and urge each other to talk about the things not
everyone might want on the front page.
The thing
that bugged me the most about this film was the team’s news judgment. The
editor in chief, James Young, deemed a student hit by a car and sexual assault
to not be newsworthy. Both topics are
issues that need to be addressed in the paper, no matter how many times it may
happen on campus. He also allowed a racial slur to be published in the letters
to the editor and I just think they should have still published it, but
censored the slur.
I most
identified with rookie reporter, Kapir Patel. I’m still pretty new to writing
for a paper and going out to do your reporting. I feel his excitement and
ambition to do something great. I also really identified with the frustration
you feel when you feel really strongly about a story being published and then
be shut down.
Overall, I
thought this film did a really good job portraying the chaos, tears and joys of
a newsroom full of inexperienced student journalists.
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