‘The Paper’ Is Hollywood’s Latest Take on Journalism

“Print is permanent. It’s, like, true love,” Ned Sampson, the editor in chief of The Toledo Truth Teller, says in an early episode of “The Paper,” which premiered this week on Peacock.

“The Paper,” a spinoff of the NBC sitcom “The Office,” is Hollywood’s latest attempt to take on journalism through a fictional lens. Ned (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives at the dying paper eager to inform the public. But he is immediately confronted by a host of barriers: Budget cuts. A shrinking subscriber base and shrinking print space. Meddling corporate overlords.

As evidenced by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s announcement last week that it will be ending its print run, the struggles of print journalism continue to mount. In this respect, “The Paper” is one of the rare depictions of journalism that nails the anxieties of the industry.

“Like other institutions of American life, it was in transition,” Ben Silverman, one of the show’s executive producers, said of journalism in an interview. It seemed an opportune moment to portray the industry’s digital transformation “in the way a great impressionist painter would paint trains entering Paris,” he said.