Newsroom meetings are really like that. Journalists and reporters fight for their own stories, news editors say yes or no or assign them differently (or not), everyone - with limited resources of space, airtime minutes and physical time, talk about what's possible for the day and what's not.
Yes there's posturing from people to try and to do their stories. The more senior you are the more outspoken you are, the more you get away with getting your way.
Some are always surprised at who got whom to talk and who got what eye-opening titbit of information from a source, spokesperson or have finally managed to clinch an interview after working at it over a very long period of time.
Did you hear when the new executive producer MacKenzie said she defines how good stories are "by the source; I define it by the number of relevant facts it contains and I define it by an X factor that I trust Will and myself to determine by using our combined five decades in the field".
"The media is biased towards success, and the media is biased to wards fairness," is another good quote from tonight's second episode. What does it mean? It means that there are not really two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides and some stories only have one.
Then there's the "revelation" that TV news start often with the hook of a sad Johnny (my words from the industry trade term - not used in the episode) where a sad example (a "Johnny") is often used to lead off a story with, "It's emotionally manipulative" viewers heard in The Newsroom. "I don't want to feel sorry for anybody. I want the facts."
Then there's the great reporter who does menial work reading the morning news because she's actually so good and an economist at heart and using her small platform to actually try and do good work. "
And the news anchor Will: "We're not setting out to lose viewers, only bringing better news for the ones we've got."
What good advice is it in the end (for any media outletor platform), when MacKenzie muses: "This show needs to be loved by strangers - not by our show" [meaning: it should be made for the public, not for the people who work at making it].
