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The new TV comedy called The Paper depicts the clumsy re-start of a newspaper ambitiously named The Truth Teller. The crises faced by the fictional Toledo-based venture may resonate in Hollywood, which uneasily awaits the start-up of a “new” tabloid — one that reflects Rupert Murdoch’s version of truth telling.
Arriving in January, the California Post will be Murdoch’s transplant of his right-leaning tabloid the New York Post, replete with shrill headlines and randy gossip. Is Hollywood ready for a new Page Six?
At 94, Murdoch, the media czar, believes that a California afflicted by “jaundiced journalism” will be receptive to his Trumpian swagger. The venture takes on added clout given the ascension last week of Rupert’s eldest son, Lachlan, to uncontested leadership of the family’s worldwide media assets. Some 90% of the Post’s present digital readership resides outside of New York, and its properties include those in London and Sydney.
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Murdoch himself bowed out of Hollywood, sort of, with the $71.3 billion sale of his Fox holdings to Disney in 2017, but his presence is by no means diminishing. For example, Guy Pearce will play Rupert in a new movie directed by Danny Boyle, who has long studied Murdoch’s journalistic disruptions in London. It’s based on Ink, a play about news scandals.
Murdoch’s media muscle has been increasingly buttressed by his Wall Street Journal revenues as well as those of the doctrinaire Fox News. The family’s internal politics was getting testy in the past two years, however, with two of his three favored heirs openly resisting Rupert’s rigidity. President Trump further complicated things by announcing a billion-dollar suit against the Journalover its coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein affair.
With Lachlan Murdoch’s ascendant ideology known to be close to his father’s, the California Post will be controlled overall by Keith Poole, the crusty Aussie veteran and Rupert favorite who now runs the New York Post.
His principal West Coast journalistic rival, the Los Angeles Times has, meanwhile, become a symbol of media fragility, having laid off 74 staffers this year alone. “The Times has lost much of its editorial energy due to its financial woes,” observes Leo Wolinsky, a former executive editor. The Times’ proprietor, Patrick Soon-Shiong, now declines to support political candidates, a decision that conflicts with his community’s liberal constituency.
The Times may also be underperforming on the entertainment and gossip front, observes Sue Cameron, a former columnist for the Hollywood Reporter who once broke major industry scoops such as Fred Silverman’s appointment as ABC boss. Army Archerd of Variety shocked Hollywood in breaking the story that Rock Hudson was succumbing to AIDS.
Page Six of the New York Post predictably leaps on every Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift nugget, obsesses on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, and likes reminding readers whenever Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles are holding hands in a Brooklyn bar. Scoops are recycled on YouTube and podcasts. TMZ, to be sure, remains a gossip competitor.
Political headlines in the Post reinforce its tabloidy tone: “Putz for Nutz,” proclaimed one banner. Translation: Former mayor Bill de Blasio decided to support socialist Zohran Mamdani as a New York mayoral candidate.
According to the Peacock mockumentary The Paper, Truth Teller, too, may plunge into the gossip minefield, within the gentler confines of Toledo. Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, the show’s comedic nuances reflect those of The Office, the NBC hit that ran from 2005-2013.
Truth Teller’s reportorial staff consists of “newsmen” with zero experience in the news business. The show’s opening sequences show readers wrapping fish and other food scraps in the latest edition. The editor, played by Domhnall Gleeson, describes his job as akin to “doing homework every day.”
While The Paper already has been renewed for another season, the newspaper, Truth Teller, itself is not shaping up as a study in success — “it’s a comedy of decline,” as the New York Times describes it.
The Murdoch-style Post, by contrast, is hiring new reporters and photographers and gearing up for combat. Tabloid journalism, its editors argue, is about telling the truth. Well, at least the truth outside of Toledo.
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