Local news gets the TV comedy treatment this fall with Peacock’s Office spinoff, The Paper
Hollywood has a track record of looking to journalism for inspiration, and come September, local news will be its latest muse.
On Monday, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, shared a few details about its upcoming show The Paper, a comedy series set at the Truth Teller, a fictional local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. The show will follow the “mockumentary” style made popular by The Office, with the premise being that the Office’s documentary crew was looking for its next subject when it found the publisher trying to save the paper.
“It’s about this struggling Midwestern newspaper that’s much reduced from its glory days. A lot of the story lines are about how this guy, Domhnall Gleeson’s character, is trying to restore this paper, and he just doesn’t have the budget for hiring reporters, and he has to use all the staff that work there on a volunteer basis to be reporters. They’re completely untrained and don’t know what they’re doing,” creator and former Office showrunner Greg Daniels told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a fruitful premise. There’s a tremendous history for local papers. The villain here is the internet and the ability to look at everybody’s news for free, and all the ad revenue going to Google.”
According to WTOL, The Paper’s production team worked with FilmToledo, a local nonprofit that bolsters film and television production in the city, to get help with “sourcing authentic Toledo brands, memorabilia, and sharing stories of Toledo-specific culture to make sure all the details were accurate.”
In the meantime, if anyone from NBC is reading this, Nieman Lab is available for authenticity consulting about the state of local news. Get in touch!
My hometown is going to be the setting for The Office spinoff!
View on Threads— Ryan Moore (@newrealmsmedia.bsky.social) May 12, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Please let there be a Free Press vs the Blade-esque story arc. Regardless, very happy news. I hope Oscar Nunez loves it in Toledo.
Clearly no one else remembers the MTV reality show about the high school newspaper staff in Florida in the mid-2000s that was also called THE PAPER but I still think about Amanda like once a month. www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/p…
View on Threads— Kate Feldman (@kateefeldman.bsky.social) May 12, 2025 at 12:18 PM
I am both thrilled and nervous about what this means for journalism https://t.co/kbb2p2dQex
— Leigh Munsil (@leighmunsil) May 12, 2025
no
— Heather Cherone (@heathercherone.bsky.social) May 12, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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