Because I was once a reporter, I've always felt a sense of estrangement inside the newsroom. The field is alive and interactive, while the newsroom is quiet and stereotypical.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I didn't like being in a newsroom all the time.
Working on 'Newsroom' has given me an appreciation of the struggle that you go through on the 24-hour news cycle. The people who are legitimately attempting to deliver honest news are really facing a tough, uphill climb that's a lot harder than any other time in history.
In the United States, the mainstream news outlets like to portray themselves as observers, content to let events play out without interference. But in Britain, where crusading journalistic campaigns are part of the tradition, it is far more acceptable for reporters to become active participants, with a specific outcome in mind.
The post-war American newsroom resembled a vast factory churning out multiple editions through the night. Reporters spent days, sometimes weeks, on a single story.
Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.
I always like to have a buffer between me and journalism in general. Not just a reporter, but journalism.
I always saw the best reporters as ones you hardly ever saw other than when they were back in the newsroom, writing their stories.
In this day and age, much of journalism is about right or left, conservative or liberal, and 'The Observer' is just that: an observer. It is about truth.
While I was doing 'The Newsroom,' I always had the news on on different networks on different TVs around my house and around my office.
Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.