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The main newsroom of the New York Times, only slightly larger than the Sheaf's

The New York Times is the single most important news outlet in America. It still breaks big stories on a regular basis and has weathered the rise of tabloids, cable news and the Internet to remain one of the most respected institutions in journalism. Not bad for a paper that just celebrated its 160th birthday.

For years, it was a sure bet that what ended up on the front page of the Times would lead the nightly newscasts of the big three American networks. But that front page has lost some of its lustre in the last decade and the paper is now heavily in debt as it tries to find new revenues amid declining readership. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times lets audiences see firsthand how this newspaper of record is changing and adapting to a new world of media.

Director Andrew Rossi couldn’t have chosen a better year to spend at the Times. He witnesses the internal debates about Wikileaks, the winding down of combat operations in Iraq and the introduction of monetary charges for online news. Throughout it all, one gets a sense that the Times really deserves its nickname, the Gray Lady. The company specializes in intensive and expensive reporting, the sort of “boring” news that matters. It is the ultimate expression of substance over style.

Others in the news business — like Nick Denton, owner of the Gawker blog empire — may scoff at the occasionally stuffy tone of the Times but there is no denying that people at the Times still think of themselves as public servants. They feed the masses their vegetables when most others are offering junk food.

Of all the reporters and editors featured in the film, two stand out. The first is Brian Stelter, a blogger extraordinaire who joined the Times at only 21. He regularly has two computers in front of him and is clearly the sort of plugged-in news junkie the paper will need to survive online. The second, and undoubtedly the star of the film, is the grizzled David Carr, a no-nonsense veteran reporter and former crack addict.

Both Stelter and Carr, although separated by age and experience, share the news instincts that make them worthy of working at the Times.

In the most memorable part of the film, Carr visits the offices of Vice after the hip magazine strikes a deal with CNN. Vice co-founder Shane Smith brags that his company’s video series exposed the real horrors of places like Liberia.

“Everyone talked to me about cannibalism! That’s fucking crazy!” Smith tells Carr. “And the New York Times, meanwhile, is writing about surfing, and I’m sitting there going like, ”˜You know what? I’m not going to talk about surfing, I’m going to talk about cannibalism, because that fucks me up.’”

The gravel-voiced Carr interrupts this diatribe to stand up for his paper.

“Before you ever went there, we’ve had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide,” he reminds Smith. “Just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do. So continue.”

This exchange really encapsulates where the Gray Lady finds herself in the 21st century. The paper still has the resources and know-how to do serious, thorough journalism. At the same time, it competes in a landscape where anyone with a camcorder and a blog has the potential to shape the news.

The Times is by no means a perfect institution. Controversies like the reporting on weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq War and the years-long plagiarism of Times reporter Jayson Blair are covered in the film, but so are exemplary moments of journalism such as the publication of the Pentagon Papers at the height of the Vietnam War. The New York Times has more influence and reach than almost any other news organization in the world, and when they screw up, it matters. But when they provide the solid journalism they are known for, it enlightens the public, champions accountability and forces others to be better.

Page One is not the most important documentary one could watch, and the sometimes esoteric world of media and publishing could leave some scratching their heads, but for news junkies it is a must-see.

Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times opens at the Roxy Theatre on Sept. 23.

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image: Magnolia Pictures