By: E&P Staff Debuting on PBS stations tonight as part of the award-winning Independent Lens series is "The Paper," which deeply probes a year in the life of the Daily Collegian at Penn State.
The film by Aaron Matthews, according to reviews, may be focused on campus but offers a telling view of the wider newspaper landscape.
An excerpt from a Philadelphia Inquirer story by Jonathan Storm today follows.
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You might also want to watch just to get a look at some of the admirable young people who don't get enough coverage in modern media that focus on coeds who go missing in the heartland, maniac murderers shooting up malls and campuses, or, perhaps, sexy student con artists who borrow a page from Nip/Tuck and live the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
The students in The Paper may skip classes left and right to pursue their journalistic duties and passions, but they are not journalism nerds.
And they are probably a little more lovable in their youthful struggle to do the right thing than some of us more seasoned journalists, but they care just as much as we do about the two age-old problems of journalism: How to provide readers with what they want and what they need.
In the film, different special-interest groups complain, with considerable authority, that the campus paper covers these concerns poorly. But the people in these groups decline to work at the paper.
Editors, baffled by a sudden circulation decline at what had been the nation's fifth-largest college paper - especially galling since it's given away on campus - struggle to make the Daily Collegian more likable, but, because they spend so much time in the office, they're not really sure how to do it.
Stories should be "more readable and entertaining, instead of having all the facts at the top," someone suggests.
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