by Jack Lee
In the new hit movie, State of Play, art eerily mirrors real life events. In the movie story, A Washington based newspaper, The Washington Globe, employs a long haired, bearded Cal McAffrey (old guard) played by Russell Crowe who teams up with Della Frye, played by Rachel McAdams (new guard) to investigate several homicides involving Congressman caught in a love triangle and a big defense corporation out to protect their assets.
Fry is an ambitious, young cub-reporter who writes a popular political blog. (Incredibly similar to Post Scripts!) The Globe’s editor bemoans the sad state of affairs for newspapers around the country. (Very true) The Globe has just been sold and the new investors have put the pressure on the editor to improve the paper’s bottom line! (Again, very true to life)
The editor, played to perfection by Helen Mirren, quips, about the only thing looking up at this paper is the online blog. (No comment) She notes this is the new direction of journalism and this irks Cal McAffrey (Crowe) who is not unlike a reporters version of Colombo. He is disheveled, earthy and a man of the people. He knows everybody in his city and has a razor sharp mind for leads or how to get the facts out of cops when the police are reluctant to talk. This unlikely duo of new and old journalists are forced to team up in order to get the real story about an all in one defense contractor which is made to look a whole lot like Halliburton paired with Blackwater. The movie rates a strong 7.5 out of 10.
Ironically the movie really hit on the truth about newspapers everywhere…online is going strong, blogs are the new wave of news, and the ink version is on the decline. Today it was announced that the average newspaper lost circulation of 7.1 percent in the October-March period from the same six-month span in 2007-2008. The latest figure represents data from 395 daily U.S. newspapers that reported in both the current and year-ago periods.
USA Today remains the No. 1 newspaper, though it suffered the steepest circulation drop in the publication’s history. It sank 7.5 percent to 2,113,725 after several periods with little change. The Gannett Co.-owned newspaper attributes the falloff mostly to a drop in hotel occupancy that stemmed from the economic decline and a December price increase for copies sold at newsstands.
The Wall Street Journal, the second-largest newspaper, was the only one in the top 25 to raise its daily circulation. It increased less than 1 percent to 2,082,189. The New York Times’ daily circulation fell 3.6 percent to 1,039,031, while the Los Angeles Times saw a drop of 6.6 percent to 723,181. Other newspapers in the top 25 had daily circulation declines ranging from less than one-tenth of 1 percent at the Chicago Sun-Times to a drop of 20.6 percent at the New York Post.