“Anyone who has worked at the N.Y. Times understands that it is a uniquely complicated organism…the hubris, the institutional arrogance, the rigidity, the arena of court politics,” says TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman. “[But still] a vital contribution to democratic society that we can hardly afford to lose.”
And yet Andrew Rossi‘s Page One, she says, “gives a rather superficial assessment of what everybody really wants to know: Will the Times make it, or not? Can the newspaper of record change fast enough, dramatically enough, to adjust to an upside-down business model? That Rossi doesn’t answer.
“In 2008, the Times cut 100 jobs, borrowed $250 million and re-leased its building. In 2009, it cut another 100 jobs. It is distinctly odd to hear someone say on film exactly what I felt at that time: ‘The mood is funereal.’ And, I might have added, not conductive to doing great journalism.”