To maintain its objectivity, The New York Times tapped someone outside the paper to review "Page One," Andrew Rossi's documentary about the struggle of the "Gray Lady" to survive in the digital age.
"Page One" plays like a love letter to the Times, but the Times' review was written with a poison pen.
Instead of a rave about the film's elegiac look at the "paper of record" Michael Kinsley, the guest critic in question, delivered a shellacking.
Kinsley, a senior advisor for Bloomberg View, the business publication's new opinion section, labeled the movie "a mess" and complained that it flits about landing on everything from Watergate to Wikileaks, to prove that the world needs the Times.
"The Times deserves a better movie, and so do you. See 'His Girl Friday' again," Kinsley writes.
About the only thing that comes in for praise in Kinsley's take-down is the Times' Renzo Piano-designed headquarters, which inspires an adjective otherwise absent in the review — "Glorious."
In response, Rossi quickly took to Twitter to protest the drubbing his film took and heap scorn on Kinsley's critical eye, noting that film reviews are not his stock in trade.
"documentaries should be reviewed by film critics, not pundits who have a stake in the 'issues,'" Rossi tweeted.
"Page One" premieres in New York, Los Angeles and other select cities on Friday.
Hopefully, the decline of print is as gripping to watch on film as the Rossi's anger over "Page One"s' bad review was to follow.
