An ode to slow journalism

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2016)

Watching 'Spotlight' should be mandatory for journalism school students. It's a perfect introductory course into how good journalism is done. It also shows the traps journalists can fall into: not recognizing a good news story, thinking it's already covered when there's still lots to follow up on, or thinking sources are unreliable because they have their own agenda. 'Spotlight' explains all of this, which is why it is an outstanding film.
The story starts with the arrival of a new editor in chief at the Boston Globe. He is not from Boston and the newsroom fears job cuts. But the opposite happens: the new boss shows them the best news story is right in front of them: a local lawyer representing the victims of child abusing priests. The only thing they have to do, is investigate it.
The journalists are not perfect heroes like Bernstein and Woodward in 'All the President's Men', but normal guys who make mistakes. The biggest mistake is that they didn't recognize the story sooner, even when they had the information. While they are working on it, they are amazed at how big the scandal really is. The uncovering itself is like a detective story: every new piece of information leads to another, until the whole story is puzzled together. At one point, an impatient reporter who wants the news to be printed, needs to be slowed down to make the story more complete.
The film shows the investigation as it is: interviews, documents, court filings, and the occasional tip. The screenplay focuses on the uncovering of the scandal, and nothing else. There's nothing of the usual Hollywood sentimentality, neither is there a love story or action scenes. There's only one short shot of the sort you see in every film about newspapers: the running printing presses, the stacking machines and the transport trucks.
The best thing about 'Spotlight' is that it is an ode to slow journalism, to investigative reporting, and to old fashioned printed newspapers, in a time when the internet seems to reduce news to short, fast items that are a dime a dozen.