Just saw State of Play, and I must say, I never thought I’d see a great reporter suspense movie. Russell Crowe was great, and this was the first movie that made me forget about Rachel McAdams in The Notebook (i’m going to be sick now). The only thing I could not stand about this movie was their view on the modern newspaper.
Crowe plays a reporter following a lead for the Washington Globe, a newspaper recently acquire by MediaCorp (supposedly some large media conglomerate). He and Rachel McAdams (the Globe’s new blog girl) take on a case about a reporter’s dead mistress. Crowe can’t stand McAdam’s newbie trendy blogger approach to news, and the movie plays out such that online media is seen as inferior. The Globe is running out of money, and this fully researched, true story is causing them trouble but they could run trash online.
What irks me about this is that the opinion among most people now is that the blog will never serve as a profit-bearing replacement to the traditional newspaper. However, when people learn to monetize their content in a way that doesn’t alienate their readers/viewers/listeners/users, they’ll find that their worries of the death of news was immature.
Despite this, State of Play was fantastic, and you should all check it out.
