Journalism 101: Journalists in the Movies

It’s hard to overstate how much the public’s perceptions of the media come from television and movies. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a good television show about the media since “Lou Grant,” and that didn’t even have Mary Tyler Moore in it, so how good could it have been?

In contrast, journalism’s done pretty well in the movies, with more famous movies about journalists — especially newspaper reporters — than I have time to go through. (Fortunately, other people are willing to take on that task.)

Instead, let’s go through what I think are the best three movies about journalism that I’ve seen:

#3: Broadcast News

This 1987 film does a great job of capturing the deadline-driven environment of the media, the screwed up people who work in it, the disparity between those who view it as a calling and those who view it as a job and the weird (and unhealthy) way that even journalists working for the same organization are competing with each other on some level. William Hurt and Albert Brooks give stand-out performances.

My only quibble with this movie is sort of a big one: The “shocking revelation” at the end isn’t. No one in television would have assumed the shoot in question would have used two cameras, as one camera is the standard on essentially all TV news shoots. (The movie also has a very anachronistic point of view about date rape which is jarring for many modern audiences.)

#2: Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical 2000 movie is about a freelance reporter, and gets the feel of being a reporter, especially a feature reporter, exactly right. The shifting power between reporter and source, the strange “are we friends or not” elements to the relationships and the precarious nature of reputation are all there. As a pure slice of life of what it’s like to be a reporter, in all its frustration and joys, is right here. A brilliant film.

#1: The Paper

Except for a silly change to heighten the tension at the end of the movie — in real life, printing presses rip off careless people’s arms, so there’s absolutely NOT anything covering the buttons to stop the presses in real pressrooms — this 1994 Ron Howard film gets it right, from start to finish. Editorial meetings sound in real life just like they do at the fictional “New York Sun” — when the editors go through the news of the day, discarding any that have no New York connections, it could have been word for word from any newspaper editorial meeting in the country — and the desperation, pride and issues are all the ones raised in newsrooms every single day around the country. The tension between getting something right or getting something first, the relative low pay of people rubbing shoulders (at times) with the rich and famous, the joy in being an ink-stained wretch instead of an uptown reporter, it’s all accurate.

The movie’s so good, even the Hollywoodized final scene in the pressroom is forgivable.

New glasses, part one

Well, I picked up my new sunglasses on Wednesday evening before the city council meeting. I had eyestrain due to my eyes getting used to the first new prescription in years, but nothing too bad — it’s not a dramatically different prescription, but things do seem clearer.

OUT WITH THE OLD:

My old glasses are a pair of beat-up old Lancetti frames that I got in Egypt in the mid-1990s as my regular glasses, and they’ve been trying to spit out their screws and fall apart for years now. Jenn calls them “Harry Potter glasses,” which suggests that she and I have very different visions of Hogwarts when reading the novels. In any case, they weren’t meant to be sunglasses, don’t provide any protection from the sides, and other than having UV protection, aren’t much in the way of sunglasses at all.

IN WITH THE NEW:

In contrast, the new sunglasses, with fancy RÄ“vo frames, are curved around the sides of my face, have polarized lenses — which helps some, but is mostly just cool when looking at polarized windshields, cell phone and iPod screens — and strangely seem to make things brighter, not darker, when I put them on, thanks to a brownish tint. It’s like I’m wearing the Blue Blockers that used to be advertised on TV for so many years.

My new regular glasses will be available in a week or so, as the LensCrafters facility I went to can’t drill through lenses at that site, and had to send away for them to be made.

And yes, I need a haircut. It was also threatening to rain at the time the pictures were taken.

Hesperia Star is Business of the Month

The Hesperia Star was today named the Business of the Month by the the Hesperia Chamber of Commerce.

Banana bread was had by all, and then the paper took us out to lunch at Shelly’s Place.

New Sheryl Crow single released

iTunes, and I assume other online music sites, have released the new Sheryl Crow single, “Good is Good,” from the forthcoming album, “Wildflower,” which will hit stores on September 27. (The video of “Good is Good” will be on VH-1 on August 8.)

The song is … OK. It might grow on me, but right now, it’s just the sort of song that’s on all of Sheryl’s albums: Sort of morose, sort of country, sort of just there. This isn’t a soaring “Soak Up the Sun” or a rocking “Steve McQueen” or a bouncy “All I Wanna Do.”

And that’s OK. Lord knows, I find Buffett’s periodic desultory attempts to just give the audience what they think they want (more party songs, wooooooo!) to be pretty depressing. But this song of Sheryl’s doesn’t speak to me so far; if I’d heard it after the album came out, I’d have assumed it was just filler.

(See? I care about artists other than Liz Phair.)

Site issues

Well, it’s been pointed out that the ability to leave comments has gone somewhat kablooey, and there’s a few problems behind the scenes as well. I will be trying to straighten them out tonight after the Hesperia City Council meeting. If you’ve tried to leave comments and have been unable to, remember what you wanted to say and try again later tonight.