PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Film Babble Blog Review

I saw this film last April at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham and really love it. I saw it again this weekend at the Colony Theater in Raleigh where it will play through next week. It is also playing in the Triangle at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary.



PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (Dir. Andrew Rossi, 2011)

Andrew Rossi's new documentary poses the question: are we witnessing the death of print media due to the internet, or are we just in a transitional period in which institutions like the New York Times will figure out how to adapt to the changing technological landscape and ultimately survive?



This film convincingly argues the latter, but it's going to be quite a struggle in the face of online competition such as the bloggosphere and Wikileaks.



Rossi's unprecedented access to the media desk of the New York Times for a year (2009-2010) has us listening like a fly on the wall to key players including Executive Editor Bill Keller, blogger turned Times writer Brain Stelter, Media Marketing Editor Bruce Headlam, and Baghdad bureau chief Tim Arangoand media and culture columnist David Carr who steals the movie over and over with his dead on acerbic comments.



We learn about the "New Times Effect," in which what the Times prints one day will set the agenda for what every other news outlet prints the next.



We learn about how Judith Miller's false reporting of Weapons of Mass Destruction damaged the Times' credibility.



From old grainy footage we learn about the newspaper's history, especially in clips of Allistar Cooke visiting the Times from the program Omnibus in 1954 I'd sure like to see more of.



As I said before Carr steals this film, but he also symbolizes the fight that the Times has left in it. One particularly amusing scene has the former crack addict turned media columinst vaporizing (his word, not mine) a blogger opponent at a SXSW panel.



PAGE ONE is a masterful piece of infotainment that captures a turbulent time for the Times. Since we're still in that time it really shouldn't be missed by anybody who has even a passing interest in the state of modern print media. Or by those who love an extremely well made engrossing documentary.



More later...

IYANLA’S DRAMA WITH OPRAH MAKES HER BOOK #1

(blackmediaSCOOP) That tv cat fight between Iyanla Vanzant and Oprah Winfrey is paying off! Iyanla’s latest book “Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through” is now a New York Times bestseller! You may remember, Iyanla enjoyed regular segments as a self-help guru on “Oprah” until a falling out ended her appearances 10 years ago. In February she returned to the show for a no-holds-barred interview that aired in two parts.

The two finally got to the bottom of the miscommunication that forced them to go their separate ways, which left Iyanla broke and on the verge of committing suicide. FYI, “Peace From Broken Pieces,” is published talk show host/author Tavis Smiley’s SmileyBooks. It currently sits at #1 on the Times’ Hardcover Advice & Misc. list.

CLICK to get the book!

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

If you are a creative person and pursuing a career in a creative industry and/or field, you should check out Elizabeth Gilbert's lecture on TED Talks.

Elizabeth attended New York University, where she studied political science by day and worked on her short stories by night. After college, she spent several years traveling around the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, collecting experiences to transform into fiction. These explorations eventually formed the basis of her first book - a short story collection calledPILGRIMS, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. During these early years in New York, she also worked as a journalist for such publications as Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. She was a three-time finalist for The National Magazine work, and an article she wrote in GQ about her experiences bartending on the Lower East Side eventually became the basis for the movie COYOTE UGLY.

In 2000, Elizabeth published her first novel, STERN MEN (a story of brutal territory wars between two remote fishing islands off the coast of Maine) which was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2002, Elizabeth published THE LAST AMERICAN MAN - the true story of the modern day woodsman Eustace Conway. This book, her first work of non-fiction, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth is best known, however for her 2006 memoir EAT PRAY LOVE, which chronicled her journey alone around the world, looking for solace after a difficult divorce. The book was an international bestseller, translated into over thirty languages, with over 10 million copies sold worldwide, and a movie version in the making, starring Julia Roberts. The book became so popular that, in 2008, Time Magazine named Elizabeth as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In 2010, Elizabeth published a follow-up to EAT PRAY LOVE called COMMITTED -- a memoir which explored her ambivalent feelings about the institution of marriage. The book immediately became a number one New York Times bestseller, and was also received with warm critical praise. As Newsweek wrote, COMMITTED "retains plenty of Gilbert's comic ruefulness and wide-eyed wonder", and NPR called the book "a rich brew of newfound insight and wisdom." COMMITTED will be published in paperback in February 2011.