Whenever the staff discusses how much people want to know about what goes on behind the scenes at the paper, someone inevitably—and rightly—notes that no one cares about that kind of “inside baseball” info. But PBS has decided that some of its viewers must be interested in the backstory of a college paper and is airing “The Paper,” a documentary about Penn State’s Daily Collegian. From the short preview video, it seems to be a pretty accurate rendition of the day-to-day banality that only ends (for a little while) when we send the paper to the printers, down to the foul-mouthed martyr to the first amendment (doesn’t remind me of anyone) and the self-consciously serious debate over what makes it to the readers. It’s darkly humorous that the clip deals with gay bashing prompted by the Collegian’s decision to run a picture of gay couples engaged in some PDA—something both the Voice and the Hoya have dealt with right here at Georgetown. College papers everywhere face the same prejudices, apparently.

—Tim Fernholz, Contributing Editor

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Arts and Entertainment, Self-promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.