You’d think that the makers of a documentary about The New York Times might channel some of the storytelling skill of their subjects into the resulting film, but director Andrew Rossi and his co-writer/co-producer Kate Novack managed to end up with the meandering, shapeless Page One: Inside the New York Times instead. Although Rossi hits on a lot of interesting subjects over the course of 90 minutes, he pursues almost none of them to any depth or satisfaction, instead spending just a few minutes going in any one direction before heading off in another, never demonstrating how these various elements add up to a complete portrait of the country’s most influential newspaper.

The Details

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Directed by Andrew Rossi

Rated R

Beyond the Weekly

IMDb: Page One

Rotten Tomatoes: Page One

Is the movie about how the Times responds to the changing media landscape and the dominance of the internet? Is it about the paper’s role in the WikiLeaks scandal? Is it about charismatic media reporter David Carr and his rise from crack addict to journalism star? Or about cost-cutting, or Carr’s reporting on the Tribune Company, or fellow reporter Tim Arango’s transition to working in Iraq? It’s about all of those things and more, for brief moments, and each new aspect that Rossi focuses on is potentially fascinating, some even worthy of entire documentaries on their own (WikiLeaks, certainly, deserves more in-depth consideration). Rossi spent a year documenting the goings-on at the Times, so it’s no surprise that he amassed a lot of worthwhile material. But if he wasn’t willing to whittle that down and focus on the most compelling subjects, he should have made a TV series instead of a movie.