Parisian Phoenix Publishing

The other day, something prompted me to think about journalism movies– I’m not sure what it was and I’m pretty sure it was something at the Museum of Printing that spurred the interest. As a Michael Keaton fan The Paper immediately popped into mind as one of my favorites. Another that made an impression more recently was The Post with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. (And side note– art director Gayle and I agree that we’d want Meryl to play Basilie d’Amille if my horror novels in the Fashion and Fiends series ever went to silver screen.)

I don’t watch TV regularly and I rarely invest 2 hours into movies, but with no more medical dramas on my list, The Connors getting repetitious and Preacher almost but not quite holding my attention, I turned to 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days, because I saw a clip of Tigerlily and Adnan on TikTok and I thought, “How can this rich white woman be so ignorant to get married in Jordan and have no concept of how women in conservative Islamic nations are expected to behave?” Each episode is the length of a movie and I was determined to make better use of my time.

I started googling lists from every angle on the internet. The 21 best journalism movies according to Entertainment Weekly can be read here. I printed out a pdf from the Society of Professional Journalists only to disagree with their alphabetical listing because 1. it’s too old to include 2015’s Spotlight, to my surprise also with Michael Keaton and the previously mention The Post, which I believe followed in 2018. And 2. It included Wag the Dog, which is a public relations movie, and another of my all-time favorites but not a journalism movie. On IMDB, anybody can make a list– so there’s one of 35 Best Journalism Movies by Captain Maxx. And over on Freedom Forum, there’s a list of 24 Journalism Films You Should Watch. In 2023, The Guardian printed an article about journalism movies.

At the end of 2022, The Seattle-Times presented a top 10 list, gotta respect the succinctness, with Spotlight taking the lead. (That’s actually an abbreviated list from the same author who published this top 25 here at about the same time. Seeing this longer version makes me lose some respect for the author as she included Superman, sure they were reporters but the movie didn’t include much journalism and The Devil Wears Prada, which is another of my favorites but I would not put fashion writing for magazines in the same category as hard news.)

Spotlight topped a lot of the lists, especially those compiled by professionals. And unlike me, I don’t think they watched it because The Hulk and the Batman familiar to GenX went after the Catholic Church.

I ordered a free 7-day trial of Starz today so that I could watch Spotlight since everyone rates it so highly and I never met a Michael Keaton movie I didn’t like.

The movie definitely highlighted good reporting and patience and technique, but it wasn’t very gripping, unless like me, you found yourself revisiting the early days of your career. Seeing microfilm and paper clips mixed with bulky computers and the first stages of the internet in mass use brought me back.

I would say in terms of journalism history it’s a 4/5 and in terms of how entertaining/riveting it is, it was a 3/5.