TV critics haven't been overly kind to The Newsroom.
Media critics, especially, haven't been overly kind to The Newsroom.
Yet I love it. Week after week, I watch and am mesmerized. And those who are not and haven't been in the news "industry" don't seem to have the same feelings about The Newsroom as those who've spent too much time in it.
Why is that?
It's because The Newsroom is the idealized version of what a newsroom should be.
And that newsroom doesn't exist.
And that pisses the hell out of people who work in newsrooms.
I understand that. I spent, as I've mentioned more than once, two decades in newspaper newsrooms. I wanted nothing more than to spend my life reporting the news.
See, most people who go into journalism really want to report the news. I say with pride that I've been accused of being anti-everything – anti-Democrat, anti-Republican, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-straight, anti-everyoneandeverythingthateverexistedinthehistoryofmankind.
See, journalists don't really like anyone, on principle. Anyone can be a liar. And newsies love nothing more than a scandal, whoever is scandalizing.
And The Newsroom allows us to pretend that there's some magical newsroom somewhere where the editor has the guts to say, "I don't care what the corporate overlords say, cover the news!"
That doesn't exist – left or right. And that ticks newsies off, to no end.
If I still worked in a newsroom, would I love The Newsroom as much? I don't know. I honestly don't know.
But I do know why working journalists aren't so fond of the show, and commiserate.
They should, however, look at The Newsroom as a place where things are as they should be, not as a reflection of how things are.
It's a lot easier to take that way.
We all want to work in a newsroom where the debt ceiling is a more important story than Casey Anthony, right? Well, most of us do. And for those who do, The Newsroom is just a reminder that we don't work in this mystical newsroom.
And that upsets those reporters.
Completely legitimately.