We binge-watched The Newsroom and got nostalgic for stuff that never existed
The Newsroom’s hero Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) starts out as a well-liked, inoffensive, Leno-like news anchor who gets goaded into an epic rant at a college forum.
The holidays are upon us, bringing tidings of horrendous traffic, congested malls, obnoxious cabbies, foul tempers, and eating and drinking binges that bring you no pleasure. At this time of year we like nothing better than to hibernate with our cats, laugh at the people who are giving themselves nervous breakdowns by trying so hard to be merry, read thousand-page novels, and binge-watch TV series we have missed.
Yesterday, having walked home from the mall—a pleasant, leisurely stroll but for the danger of contracting black lung from car exhausts—we cleaned the litterbox, showered, and huddled with the cats to watch Season 1 of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom.
The Newsroom has gotten mixed reviews and is reviled by many of the people who were expected to support it. We love it, but then we have spent time in newsrooms, print and TV—mostly on the sidelines, heckling like Waldorf and Statler on The Muppet Show. And we love the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s. (His Girl Friday happens in a newsroom.)
Which is not to say that The Newsroom is anything like our experience of journalism. That stuff does not happen in any newsroom we’ve ever seen. In real life there are no dramatic declarations of principle, except by people who intend to run for office or need new investors, and certainly not by people who want to remain employed. No one identifies with Don Quixote because he’s old and batty, that is assuming they know Don Quixote, if not from Cervantes then from the Broadway musical. And no one will call out the morons because said morons have followers and are backed by corporate interests.
The Newsroom is a romantic fantasy about what journalism could be—a world where people speak in complete paragraphs, where intelligent people rise up against the mediocrity and meretriciousness of contemporary media culture, where intelligent people are actually listened to. That’s why we got weepy: We’re nostalgic for something that never existed.
We do take issue with a common criticism of The Newsroom: “Nobody talks like that.” Of course there are people who are that smart and articulate. There’s just no place for them on television.
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