Remembering the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Video Elegies
Our Notable Narratives for the end of April are two films, each recounting the death of a major American newspaper.
“Remembering the Seattle Post-Intelligencer” records the voices of journalists reflecting on what they will miss about their paper, which continues as an online-only publication. Footage of the trademark globe atop the paper’s office building leads to a series of interviews with staff members, who talk about the excitement of covering events “way above [their] pay grade,” the rush of the newsroom, and a sense of having served the disenfranchised of Seattle. Curt Milton’s video moves from staff interviews to slower, layered visuals of employees assembling for a final picture, then closes with that formal group photograph—graciously ceding the final word to the kind of images that ran in the pages of the paper for more than a century.
“Final Edition,” which appeared first and inspired Milton, establishes a more traditional narrative by using a husband and wife who work at Denver’s Rocky Mountain News as an entry point into the story. Their description of the announcement that the paper will be sold or shuttered launches the narrative arc. We know that the paper will fold in the end, and so we watch uncomfortably as the video records the staff still in limbo. By the time that Rich Boehne, president and CEO of Scripps, tells the newsroom that he will close the paper, we have met and identified with many of the reporters and editors, and we suffer with them. [To read our interview with John Temple, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, click here.]
The Rocky Mountain News’ effort is the more ambitious of the two projects, involving a team of videographers and producers who reach out not only to the paper’s staff but also the citizens of Denver and even the mayor. Ultimately, “Final Edition” propels the viewer into the heart of the devastation and betrayal reporters and editors feel, while “Remembering the Seattle Post-Intelligencer” retains the reserve of a tribute. But the two together capture the complicated mix of pride, anger, and grief that so many journalists feel as printed newspapers founder.