Marijke Rowland: ‘Spotlight’ movie a win for journalism

With all due respect to my colleagues, us journalists are a pretty schlubby bunch.

Sure there are the exceptions, but walk through any newsroom – particularly a newspaper newsroom – with a sartorial eye and you’ll largely find an unremarkable sea of sensible khakis, rumpled shirts, comfortable cardigans and the like. Today, for example, I am wearing well-worn jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, gray hoodie and shoes that are probably older than most third-graders.

So imagine our collective surprise to find ourselves, by way of the film “Spotlight,” not only the center of attention but also the big winners on Hollywood’s most glamorous night. The film’s best-picture upset of “The Revenant” was seen as a major win by myself and fellow ink-stained wretches. Journalism won. Journalism beat Leonardo DiCaprio. Journalism beat chrome-mouthed warriors in souped-up death mobiles racing across an endless dessert. Huzzah, newspapers are saved.

Well, if only.

“Spotlight” is indeed a great film. Superbly crafted, well-acted, tautly paced. Like other great films about journalism in the past, from “All the President’s Men” to “Good Night, and Good Luck,” its core revolves around the critical struggle of speaking truth to power. The real-life Spotlight team at the Boston Globe uncovered the child sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in the early 2000s. Their tireless investigation spent years peeling back a systematic cover-up that showed abusive priests were simply being reassigned to other parishes instead of being removed or reprimanded.

The Boston Globe rightfully earned the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the work.

For a newspaper reporter like myself, watching the depiction of their work in “Spotlight” and the film’s subsequent success has been oddly bittersweet experience. There is unmistakable joy and a sense of triumphant pride in being part of the fourth estate. That pursuit of the truth, that drive to elucidate – these are the reasons most journalists get into journalism in the first place. Well, that and election night pizza. So to see a small film like “Spotlight” come out victorious in a small way is a victory for us all. And for us newspaper survivors, it’s a much-needed shot in the arm.

But then there is the other side. The bitter amid the sweet. “Spotlight” feels contemporary in many ways, but in others it is very much a period piece. The film begins in 2001 and ends in 2003. That is over a dozen years ago, and in that time period journalism – and more specifically the newspaper industry – has undergone a seismic shift. Facebook hadn’t been invented yet. The iPhone was still four years away. Twitter was what birds did.

Since then newspapers across the country have been downsized, consolidated, shuttered and generally decimated. Don’t get me wrong; we’re still here. And the media professionals who work in them – and I work with every day – are no less passionate about their jobs or the importance of our roles in a well-informed democracy. But our resources and scope, for the most part, are very, very different.

Having worked in the past as an intern at large metropolitan papers around the same time period as “Spotlight,” I can attest to the accuracy of the film’s depiction of those then massive organizations. In particular, the portrayal of the paper’s vast library struck a nerve. For the most part, papers large and less large all had libraries back then, because knowing our history has and always will be an important part of journalism. But this was also before most things were archived online, so the reporters had to leaf through real pages, sort through old clippings. This was boot-leather journalism at its finest.

While our toolbox may have changed drastically – now a few keystrokes can find what poring through boxes of files did before – our mission remains the same. Still, the segmentation of our audience has made it more difficult than ever for us to deliver that message. All those competing screens – large, small and even on our wrists – vying for a retweet or a share or a like or a follow. Particularly for community papers, the struggle to break through the din of information and get beyond the merely viral is all too real.

But without us, who would be there to continue to speak truth to power? Who would go to the city council chambers, the irrigation district boards, the county supervisors meetings and sift through it all? Who will uncover systematic abuse and cover-up of children by one of the most powerful and revered institutions in the world? Granted, not all of our work is as far-reaching or even glamorous. But it matters nonetheless.

So, as I watched the team from “Spotlight” pick up their prize at the Oscars Sunday night, I felt inspired as a journalist – for sure. But my real hope is that the film helps to inspire the public. Journalism is exciting and interesting and an essential part of our society. You may not always like what us rumpled khaki-clad reporters have to say. But I hope at least you’re glad we’re out there, trying to say it in the first place.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Marijke Rowland: ‘Spotlight’ movie a win for journalism."