NYTimes

The Media Equation

Two Traders in Gossip Go Toe to Toe

By DAVID CARR

Published: June 9, 2013

For close readers of the entertainment trade press, the story that rocketed around Hollywood a week ago offered a familiar and juicy tableau. Citing unnamed sources, the exclusive, headlined “Shocker,” suggested that a powerful, unruly star in the entertainment industry had been fired by a boss who had finally had enough

Anybody who has read Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, an industry Web site, has seen this kind of public execution. It is a specialty of hers, often backed up by a force field that makes it come true regardless of whether it was to begin with.

Except this time the article was written by Sharon Waxman, who runs The Wrap, a competing Web site, and the person who was reportedly being given the gate was none other than Nikki Finke.

“Nikki Finke has been fired from the blog she founded, Deadline Hollywood, and will be leaving the company as soon as this week, multiple individuals with knowledge of the situation have told me,” Ms. Waxman wrote on Sunday, June 2.

But the news was not followed by the sound of Champagne corks popping in the executive suites Ms. Finke had routinely terrorized for one simple reason: it did not turn out to be true. Ms. Waxman, perhaps driven by wish fulfillment, wrote beyond the facts at hand.

Still, the town is enjoying the moment, watching a knife fight between two industry observers and former pals who clearly can’t stand each other. Ms. Finke has the upper hand, with a closely followed site and a long reputation for breaking important industry news, while Ms. Waxman, whose site has struggled, is clearly punching up.

Ms. Waxman’s decision to begin publishing The Wrap in 2009, with backing from Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, was viewed by Ms. Finke as an act of betrayal. The sniping has been remarkable, even by Hollywood standards, but the story of Ms. Finke being fired represented a huge escalation.

There is irony in the moment because Ms. Finke is the queen of the ritual sacrifice, having roasted industry leaders like Marc Shmuger of Universal and Ben Silverman of NBC until they caught fire and ended up out of their jobs.

Ms. Finke is erratic but very effective, using old-school tactics to power a new media enterprise. She and her reporters are direct in telling their sources that if scoops go to competitors, a price will be paid, and that if moguls appear at the conference of a competitor, like The Wrap, they can expect to be spanked. The site and its alerts are on the smartphones of most industry executives because Deadline Hollywood covers the industry’s every wiggle fast and ferociously.

As one who sometimes wore out her welcome in mainstream media — she has worked at The Associated Press, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times and New York Magazine — Ms. Finke found her métier on the Web, where sourcing standards are often thin or nonexistent and the prosecution of journalism is a far less mannered affair.

Ms. Finke’s site was bought four years ago with a great deal of fanfare by Jay Penske, a budding media mogul by way of auto racing.

Mr. Penske, who was eager to add heat and gravitas to a group of marginal entertainment assets, walked into the deal with eyes wide open and has been rewarded with a site that gets significant traffic and advertisements. But he has paid dearly for it, spending a great deal of time trying to sooth Ms. Finke or the targets she has maimed.

Deadline’s dominance over the traditional trade outlets was threatened in 2010 after Janice Min, a New York magazine veteran and longtime editor of Us Weekly, took over another competitor, The Hollywood Reporter. To supplement the publication’s Web site, Ms. Min began producing a visually lush weekly magazine that was very well received. Web traffic and advertising have soared in part because Ms. Min produces much more consumer-oriented entertainment coverage.

In an effort to compete, Mr. Penske bought Variety last year, and what had been a strained relationship between Ms. Finke and Mr. Penske broke out into a very public war. Ms. Finke said Mr. Penske had promised to let her supervise the rebirth of the deteriorating Variety brand, but instead froze her out.

She has been complaining bitterly and sometimes publicly since, including saying in print that Mr. Penske had lied to her. Her frenzy and Mr. Penske’s fatigue in managing same are well-known, but the feud gained visibility because Ms. Finke’s contract, which runs until 2016, allows her an escape that will arrive in 2014. No one knows what the mercurial Ms. Finke might do — clearly not Ms. Waxman, not her boss, and maybe not even Ms. Finke herself.

I buckled up and sent an e-mail to Ms. Finke, and in a subsequent phone call she did not disappoint. After chewing me out for 15 minutes over a four-year-old story she didn’t like, she turned to the matter at hand. 

“I still work here and beyond that, I am not going to dignify Sharon Waxman’s story,” she said. “She has a terrible reputation for accuracy in Hollywood, and to dignify anything she writes with a denial is ludicrous.”

At some length, Ms. Finke suggested that Ms. Waxman was seeking revenge because The Wrap was being soundly beaten by Deadline — the traffic at Deadline is more than twice that of The Wrap’s, according to comScore — and that Ms. Waxman is jealous of Ms. Finke’s success, her compensation, which she said was more than $1 million a year, and her site’s history of breaking news.

Ms. Waxman said the story just hasn’t come true ... yet.

“I absolutely stand behind the story, and if facts change I will report them as they occur,” she said. “For the moment, I have not been able to get a direct answer from Nikki Finke or Jay Penske about her status there.”

Ms. Finke was clear about her running disagreements with Mr. Penske, but also said, “None of the great things that have happened at Deadline would have been possible without Jay Penske.”

Although Ms. Finke is livid about Ms. Waxman’s suggestion that she had been fired, she is enjoying the attention and has called around town to see how the story is landing. And given her chronic conflicts with Mr. Penske, she likes being seen as a flight risk.

“I have had all kinds of job offers since this started,” she said. (Others confirmed that Ms. Finke’s brand of high-engagement, high-velocity content is coveted by other media outlets.)

In our conversation, it was clear that Ms. Waxman, who has worked as a reporter at The Washington Post and The New York Times, was also enjoying being in the middle of things, even if the story that made it possible refuses to come true.

The spectacle has been a delicious one for the peanut gallery in the Hollywood Hills, in part because it keeps the involved parties preoccupied and less prone to mischief elsewhere.

“I think that people are grateful for anything that takes the attention off the rest of us,” said one Hollywood executive who deals with both editors on a regular basis and hence would not speak on the record criticizing either one. “But regardless of what happens, I don’t think anyone believes that Nikki is going away.”

The story’s prominence — it ran on the front page of The Los Angeles Times — is a testament to her hold on the imagination of the industry she covers. A spectral figure rarely seen in public, she makes up for it on the phone and in print. Ms. Finke sees herself as a Jeremiah, a scold and a truth-teller in a business that trades in illusion and lies.

And while people in the film and television business complain bitterly about her tactics, most of them play ball. As someone who used to cover the Oscar season, I watched again and again as people used her site as the seedy park on the outskirts of town where they sneaked up on others and stabbed them from behind.

Absent that venal ecosystem, Ms. Finke would be just one more rage-aholic with a modem. But she prospers by exploiting a narcissistic industry that lives on fear and self-preservation. Even given her excesses and mania, Ms. Finke has never pretended to be something she is not, which is more than I can say for the industry heavyweights who complain about her even as they provide her sustenance.

If it is true that people get the government they deserve, then many industries get the media coverage they merit as well. Regardless of her base of operations, Hollywood deserves Nikki Finke.

Bond 1 - 22 + Skyfall

The Sweet Spot: Nov. 9

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A.O. Scott and David Carr discuss today's spy movies.  "Spies, they're just like us."




A Two-Hour Supercut, '50 Years Of James Bond: The Movie' via The Playlist

Published on Nov 6, 2012 by James Bond

Approximately five minutes from each of the 22 Eon produced James Bond films have been cut together, in order and in sequence, beginning with the first five minutes of DR. NO (1962) followed by minutes 5-10 of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), minutes 10-15 of GOLDFINGER (1964), minutes 15-20 of THUNDERBALL (1965), continuing on through each of the remaining 18 Bond features (accounting for variables in each title's running time) culminating with the final five minutes of 2008's QUANTUM OF SOLACE.

This fresh look at the "James Bond Formula" provides a new exploration of the evolution of the series into a filmmaking genre uniquely it's own. With few exceptions, each title's transition into the picture that follows it is nearly seamless, creating a viewing experience that at first might serve to reminds us "if you've seen one Bond film, you've seen them all," but looking more closely it is in fact an endearing homage to a character who single-handedly shaped modern cinema's action/adventure formula and who continues to leave an indelible mark on generations worldwide.

From NYTimes

Movie Review

What a Man! What a Suit!

‘Skyfall,’ With Daniel Craig as James Bond

Francois Duhamel/Columbia Pictures

Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in "Skyfall."

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: November 7, 2012

When James Bond dashed into Buckingham Palace in July to pick up Queen Elizabeth so they could parachute into the Olympic opening ceremony, it was tough to picture what he could do for an encore. Zip Line into the next European summit meeting with Angela Merkel tucked under his arm? Wrestle nude on the frozen banks of the Volga with Vladimir Putin? Turning Britain’s royal octogenarian into a Bond girl was a stroke of cross-marketing genius that profited queen and country both, while also encapsulating the appeal of the 007 brand in the age of aerial drones.

It’s the human factor, to borrow somewhat perversely a phrase from Graham Greene, who worked for Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6. In his novel “The Human Factor,” about a double agent, Greene sought, he said, to portray the British secret service unromantically, with “men going daily to their office to earn their pensions.” Bond is wearing a silver-gray suit when he powers into “Skyfall,” the latest 007 escapade, but it isn’t cut for office work. The suit is seductively tight, for starters, and moves like a second skin when Daniel Craig in his third stint as Bond races through an atavistic opener that — with bullets buzzing and M (Judi Dench) whispering orders in his ear — puts him back on mortal, yet recognizably Bondian, ground.

And just in time too, given that he looked as if he were on the Bataan Death March in his last film, “Quantum of Solace.” Directed by a surprisingly well-equipped Sam Mendes, “Skyfall” is, in every way, a superior follow-up to “Casino Royale,” the 2006 reboot that introduced Mr. Craig as Bond. “Skyfall” even plays like something of a franchise rethink, partly because it brings in new faces and implies that Bond, like Jason Bourne, needed to be reborn. The tone is again playful and the stakes feel serious if not punishingly so. This is a Bond who, after vaulting into a moving train car, pauses to adjust a shirt cuff, a gesture that eases the scene’s momentum without putting the brakes on it.

That “Skyfall” includes a sequence on a train — a passenger one, no less — suggests that this may be very much like your granddaddy’s Bond, even without the bikinied backdrop. From the initial sequence, one of those characteristic supersize set pieces that precede the opening credits, Mr. Mendes shows that he’s having his fun with 007. The opening doesn’t just take place in Turkey, one of those putatively exotic locales adorned with woven carpets and dark-complexioned extras, it also includes smoothly choreographed mayhem in both a crowded bazaar and outdoor market. There, amid these familiar action-cinema signposts, Bond and another agency operative, the suitably named Eve (Naomie Harris), chase down a baddie as locals and oranges scatter.

Bondologists may linger over that Turkey location. Globe tripping has always been as crucial to the movies as groovy gadgets: it’s an elegant way to map the geopolitical coordinates while providing armchair adventure for the rest of us. Here, though, you have to wonder if Mr. Mendes and the writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan have folded some 007 arcana into the mix. Turkey plays a major role in the second, often most critically celebrated Bond film, “From Russia With Love,” which, like this one, includes a lethal fight on a train, a formidable blond male adversary and an island headquarters. But whether the filmmakers want to intimate that this is the rightful follow-up to the rebooted Bond is less interesting than this type of longitudinal thinking the movies inspire.

One of the satisfactions of these screen spectaculars, one that Mr. Mendes nicely capitalizes on, is that they have made all of us Bondologists. We each have favorite Bonds (Sean Connery for me, followed by Mr. Craig), our preferred 007 women, outlaws, slick gizmos, sweet rides, command centers and double entendres. We know what kind of cocktail Bond savors and whom he works for and that he often behaves more like a killer than a tradecraft wizard. We also know that, like the cowboy’s six-shooter and horse, Bond’s gun and sports car are genre givens, as is a sizable body count. And while, over the years, there have been cruel, suave and silly Bonds, there is always only one Bond, James Bond. The movies have schooled us well.

Mr. Mendes, a British film and theater director whose dubious screen achievements include embalming the American dream in “Revolutionary Road,” gets Bond just right in a story that first turns on a domestic threat and then on a personal one. Mr. Mendes grasps the spy’s existential center, as typified by the ritualistic mano a mano grappling that almost every action movie now deploys to signal that, when push comes to punch, the hero can still kill with his bare hands. There’s brutal death here, but there’s also a pervading sense of mortality that makes the falling bodies register a little longer than they sometimes do in a Bond movie. As a director of films like “American Beauty” and “Away We Go” Mr. Mendes has indulged in a noxious blend of self-seriousness and condescension. There’s none of that here.

Instead he honors the contract that the Bond series made with its fans long ago and delivers the customary chases, pretty women and silky villainy along with the little and big bangs. Whether Mr. Mendes is deploying an explosion or a delectable detail, he retains a crucially human scale and intimacy, largely by foregrounding the performers. To that end, while “Skyfall” takes off with shock-and-awe blockbuster dazzle, it’s opulent rather than outlandish and insistently, progressively low-key, despite an Orientalist fantasy with dragons and dragon ladies. As Bond sprints from peril to pleasure, Mr. Craig and the other players — including an exceptional, wittily venal Javier Bardem, a sleek Ralph Fiennes and a likable Ben Whishaw — turn out to be the most spectacular of Mr. Mendes’s special effects.

“Skyfall” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The usual. if mostly bloodless, violence.

Disney / Pixar & other film bits

From the Wire: Is 'Brave' Pixar's First "Disney Movie?"

Blogs by Matt Singer | June 22, 2012 4:09 PM

"Brave."

At Film School Rejects, Neil Miller puts forward the theory that Pixar's new movie "Brave" marks a milestone for the animation studio: its first "true Disney movie":

"[Disney always manages to] come up with stories that serve two purposes: capture the adoration of youth and then get them to convince their parents to buy them things to fuel those fires of love. And for years, fairy tales and princess stories have been their bread and butter. Conversely, the folks at Pixar have always marched to a slightly different beat. They’ve always simply made stories they thought were fun, not that they necessarily thought we’d buy. Movies about talking toys, runaway fish, and main characters who can’t even talk. For Pixar (even though they became an official part of Disney in 2006 and had a working relationship with the Mouse House well before that), they’ve never made anything that felt like a Disney movie. That is, until their latest film, 'Brave.' For better or worse, a product of princess story perception or real influence, 'Brave' is a Disney movie at heart."

Drawing a distinction between "Disney movies" and "Pixar movies" is an interesting one on a few levels. Disney has distributed every single Pixar production, meaning every Pixar movie is, technically speaking, also a Disney movie. The current chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios is John Lasseter, who, as the chief creative officer of Pixar and director of five of its movies, did more than just about anyone to define what a "Pixar movie" is. If he's now also in charge of Disney, one might assume that a "Disney movie" and a "Pixar movie" might essentially become one and the same.

Yet I understand some of what Miller's talking about. In my own "Brave" review, I said the film's set-up was pure "old school Disney: generational conflict, the quest for a princess’ heart, and later, sinister looking witches and even a talking animal or two." To me, saying "Brave" recalled old school Disney was a compliment -- nobody makes fairy tales like Disney.

Miller's use of the term "Disney movie" sounds a bit more pejorative -- that it's not enough for Disney to make a good film, it's got to be a sellable one too. Certainly few companies are as brilliant marketers (or Mouseketers) as Disney, and Miller would not be the first to suggest that Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006 had a negative influence on the company, encouraging them to turn their minds towards products and away from stories (if that's true, then perhaps "Cars 2," rather than "Brave," would be Pixar's first "Disney movie").

Though I completely agree that "Brave" shares stronger thematic connections with the Disney princess movies of old than, say "WALL-E" or "Up," I don't know that I necessarily buy the narrative that the purity of Pixar has been corrupted by Disney's influence. True, Pixar's earlier films had some of their strongest stories and characters. True, their last couple movies have suggested, rightfully or wrongfully, a bottom-line motivation for all their creative decisions.

But let's not pretend that early Pixar was some sort of outpost of the avant-garde. Their first feature was about a bunch of toys -- as cross-promotional concepts go, they don't get more ready-made than that. Their third movie was also their first sequel, with new toys to sell, plus new versions of the old ones. Over the years they've made films about bugs, super-heroes, monsters, and robots -- all highly sellable concepts that they then turned into all sorts of products (and I should know -- I've bought quite a few of them). And let's not forget the guy who helped found Pixar, and led it during those days -- Apple's Steve Jobs -- knew as much about salesmanship as anyone who ever lived.

When you see John Lasseter interviewed on television or in documentaries, he's usually sitting in his office, which is filled from floor to ceiling with Pixar stuff; seemingly every Woody and Buzz Lightyear toy, plush, and lunchbox ever produced. Some of that might be proud papa syndrome -- if you created something that became a childhood icon, you'd probably get a kick out collecting it, too -- but part of that, I think, speaks to Lasseter's mentality as a fan. A self-proclaimed "Disney geek," Lasseter cherished everything Disney made, both on the screen and off. Even if he wasn't the guy who'd helped lead Pixar, he'd probably buy their merchandise anyway.

So when we argue that Pixar has now become a place that puts the cart before the horse, maybe we should remember that the guy driving that cart is known as a hardcore cart collector. And maybe he values the cart almost as highly as the horse. And maybe the things that we think represent "Disney movies" have also represented "Pixar movies" all along.



Total Film ‏@totalfilm

This Prometheus chart is quite handy... (via http://on.fb.me/L9Ljl6 ) pic.twitter.com/gFoLqgRJ

5 Scientists Share Their Baffled Reactions on the Science in 'Prometheus'

Shaw and Holloway. Official still, 20th Century Fox.

Warning: Spoilers.
I wanted to like Prometheus more than I did. After all, it’s not every day you see a woman hard-core enough to give herself her own abortion/c-section. I liked parts of it quite a bit. But there was some serious poor science in this movie.
So much poor science.

I talked with five scientists and described scenarios in Prometheus that relate to their respective disciplines. Then I asked them some frankly leading questions. They share their take on the film, below.
Wade Catts, Archaeologist, John Milner Associates

In one scene, two archeologists have found the severed head of an alien. The archeologists know a storm is coming, and they need to get to their spaceship before the storm hits. They grab the head, shove it into a sack, and take it with them. Do you think that would have happened?
The likelihood that you’d just pick up and run off with it is pretty low in the circumstances you’re describing. If there’s a way to get back to the spot and know exactly where it came from, I would say it wouldn’t have been done that way.
If they’re truly archeologists, they’re there to do a job. They would have vertical and horizontal control over where objects are recovered: You do everything in XYZ coordinates, so that you know where something came from horizontally and where it comes from vertically. Any time you do an archeological project, you essentially have destroyed the archeological record as you’re going along, so the more information you record, the more photography, the more the handwritten notes, the better off you are in able to get it back in its place, as well as time.
One of the archaeologists drops the sack. What would happen to a specimen after a few thousand years if it had dropped on the ground?
[Laughs.] It would probably shatter into a bunch of pieces, but hey, if it’s an alien race, who knows what their skulls are made of? Their skulls could be made of Kryptonite.

No, they’re proto-humans.
I assume that they’re bone, and bone would shatter.
What would you do with the head of what’s likely the most remarkable scientific discovery of all time?
The object itself contains valuable information. It’s gotta be measured, drawn, photographed. You need to get as much from it as you possibly can.

The archaeologists don’t do that. Instead, they hook it up to electricity.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a project where I’ve recovered a skull and tried to reanimate it. Is there tissue on it?
It’s a complete head.
That’s very different. Of course I would try to poke electricity through it.
After inserting a probe that sends some sort of megahertz pulse into it, the skull is animated. Then it explodes.
[Laughs hard.]
Would you consider this an important scientific discovery when all you have is a mass of bloody tissue?
By that point, no.
Now you’re just being a treasure hunter and a looter, and that’s not what archeologists do. The movie you’re describing sounds more like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Bill Chadwick, Geologist, John Milner Associates
The first thing the geologist says is, “I’m in it for the money.”
[A pause that I interpret as puzzled silence.] Uh, typically not.
The scientists, including the geologist, come across a hollow mountain, then immediately enter it. Would you enter a hollow mountain on an alien planet, or would you perform some tests first?
I might look around, do some tests on the material first. I’m sure eventually I’d go in. I’ve been in caves where I didn’t know where it would lead.
The geologist uses science-fictional probes to map the area after he gets inside. If you had the technology, wouldn’t you have mapped the area before you had entered?
I would do it before entering.
The geologist, the one with the probes, gets lost. How do you prevent getting lost?
Theoretically if you’re mapping, you would know your way back out using the map you’ve created. Depending on what the ground is like, you can follow your steps.
The geologist didn’t do any of that.
Maybe he was lost in the moment.
Ken Paige, Head of the Department of Animal Biology, University of Illinois
In one scene, a biologist encounters an alien creature that looks like a giant phallus. The biologist refers to it as a “she.” What would you call a creature that resembles a giant phallus?
A “he.” Definitely.
This phallus soon spreads open and seems to display a neck frill. As a biologist, what would that mean to you?
It can be defensive or it can attract mates. Usually it’s a threat display. It makes the animal look bigger and more ferocious.
The biologist doesn’t back away from the threat display. If you were there, would you reach out and touch the alien or, ya know, try to contain it in some way?
Probably contain it in some way to see what it is. Depends on how big it is, I’d use an actual snake stick, which would clasp it behind the neck and hold it down.
He doesn’t do that. He reaches out with a gloved hand, then the alien wraps itself around his arm. He screams for the geologist to get it off of him, and the geologist attacks it. What would you have done?
My goodness. I certainly wouldn’t try to kill it or harm it in any way.
Too late. The alien has killed them both.
I always cringe when I see those things. Where are the advisors to the movie? If you’re going to do a movie, do it right. 
You should be the next Hollywood advisor.
As long as they pay me the big bucks. Like the geologist.

Dr. Michael Brotherton, author and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming
In an early shot in the movie, we see a light moving across the sky: a ship on its way to a planet. However, the ship is moving faster-than-light…but stars emit light at the speed of light. What would that really look like from our point of view here on Earth?
My guess is that the ship should be invisible — just fade out into a deep red that vanishes as it surpasses lightspeed.
Until it hits a dense bit of gas or speck of dust…and explodes.

[Author's note: For another look at the science of Prometheus, read Brotherton's essay, here.]

Dr. Robert Hogan, Psychologist and international authority on leadership and organizational effectiveness. President of Hogan Assessment Systems
Here we are in space. Our protagonists are on a mission of extended length, but none of them have met each other before. Don’t you think they should have met each other first?
They do that all the time. They hire people for these expeditions based on their technical expertise… and send them off without paying any attention to the kind of people they’re sending. They don’t pay any attention to personality. NASA will pay some attention to mental illness, because they don’t want to send crazy people on these missions. But there’s a whole lot more to personality than mental illness. It doesn’t mean you can work as part of a team.
The National Science Foundation and the Navy send people every winter to Antarctica to these research stations that when they get in, they can’t get out; it’s is the same thing as sending them to space. Jesus, there are unbelievable stories of people going crazy and having to build cages, because they’re out of control. Of course, if you’re a woman in that environment, you’re in real trouble.
One of the problems with the movie was the group dynamic. One character said, “It’s my job to make sure you do yours,” but two archeologists were put in charge. The result: multiple conflicting agendas and absolutely no teamwork. How would you fix this?
I can tell you what you need, for what it’s worth: You need one person who’s good at solving problems, someone who has ideas, because problems always come up. You need one person who’s good at human relations, who can keep the group functioning together. You need one person who’s kind of a functionary, who’ll implement and get things done. And you need a leader type will push for results.
The movie had none of those.
If you don’t have those four components, the team will fail.
They all died, except one.
It happens in real life too.

The Media Equation

HBO’s ‘Newsroom’ as a Map for CNN

John P. Johnson/HBO

From left, Thomas Sadoski, Sam Waterston and Jeff Daniels in “The Newsroom” on HBO.

By DAVID CARR

Published: June 24, 2012

CNN, which has long struggled to locate an anchor for its 8 p.m. hour, may have finally found him.

Enlarge This Image

Melissa Moseley/HBO

Aaron Sorkin on set of "The Newsroom," which he described his new show as “a valentine” to the news industry.

Will McAvoy is handsome, forthright and authoritative, with just enough irascibility and skepticism to seem provocative. He believes in the primacy of news, that truth is not the hole in the middle of the doughnut and that good information will help the body politic find the angels of its better nature.

He is also a figment of Aaron Sorkin’s imagination, a confected, perfected news anchor in “The Newsroom,” a show that began Sunday night on HBO, which, like CNN, is owned by Time Warner. Speaking at the premiere in a screening room at the company’s headquarters last week, Mr. Sorkin described “The Newsroom” as “a valentine” to the news industry and boy, could CNN use one.

HBO has been on a bit of a run, connecting with “Game of Thrones” and “Girls,” shows about the battle for survival in very different realms. CNN has been on a run as well, but it’s the kind a toboggan makes on a snowy hill. Once the leader in cable news, CNN clocked its lowest rating in a decade in April. It has been flanked and then overrun, first by Fox News from the right and then by MSNBC on the left.

CNN has stuck with, well, a version of the news, and gotten clobbered in the process. Its tenuous plight as the honest tradesman of the TV news business is reflected in the scripts of “The Newsroom” — Will McAvoy works for Atlantis World Media, named after a lost kingdom, and there are liberal sprinklings of “Man of La Mancha,” with arguments over who is being more quixotic.

The studios Will roams through are very much a mirror of CNN’s, part of a vast empire with many holdings that outperform news. To tie the allegory all together, Jane Fonda — a k a the former Mrs. Ted Turner — is cast as the boss of all bosses, listening closely for a few episodes and then landing with a vengeance.

In Mr. Sorkin’s series, and out there in the big, bad world of television, there is a battle for the souls and eyeballs of the American viewing public, and CNN finds itself in a competitive business where simply delivering the news is no longer sufficient.

Mr. Sorkin rejects that mandate. In “The Newsroom,” Mr. McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, is asked what he actually believes in, in front of a crowd of earnest journalism students, and he answers truthfully: America, and journalism, have gone off the rails. Stirred by his own speech and by his new executive producer, an old flame played by Emily Mortimer, they decide to forgo fluff and, radically enough, cover the news.

In an on-air apology that follows, the McAvoy character acknowledges that “we took a dive for our ratings” and vows to produce a show that reflects importance, not heat. At the end of his mission statement, he asks, “Who are we to make these decisions?” (Long pause.) “We are the media elite.”

The conceit is that if cable networks did a good job of cooking informational broccoli, we would line up for second helpings. Too bad it happens not to be true — not when coverage of a dolphin that has lost its way can generate more empathy than ethnic minorities being wiped out in far-flung places.

The chicken-and-egg debate over which got dumb first — the viewing masses or the news — seems less important than that cold fact that both are true. The truth is that aspirations rarely leap off the screen and into the American consciousness, and the more noble television tries to make them the more detached from reality they seem.

Mr. Sorkin, however, doesn’t mind bucking the tide. “I think the reason it’s been reviewed as far-fetched is that it’s far-fetched,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Every bit as far-fetched as a Democratic administration that gets stuff done,” he added, referring to the accomplished — and entirely fictional — Bartlet administration in “The West Wing,” which he also wrote.

Then he added, “I don’t know anything about ratings (and I’ve had the ratings to back that up) but if I were the president of CNN I would put the smartest news people I know in a room and ask, ‘What would a utopian news show look like?’ and then I’d ask ‘What’s stopping us from doing that?’ ”

Mr. Sorkin says he knows there is no collective time machine to take us back to the era of Murrow and Cronkite.

“Part of the emotion and romance of the show is being reminded of the role that great journalism’s played in our past and that the possibility exists that we could lift ourselves up by coming back to that church,” he said.

Fore certain, there would be a few empty pews. Much of the audience expects to be infotained when they turn on the news, so every wiggle and wobble of the Tot Mom becomes freighted with meaning. But there is also a sizable audience that tunes in for updates on actual news and sees talking heads arguing over Bristol Palin as if she were a head of state, and drug-fueled cannibalism discussed as a growing trend. There are others like me, fans of news, who feel less enlightened than implicated when we do tune in.

As viewers, we hew toward picking sides in news programming because it creates the illusion not just of import and drama, but that someone is at fault and things can be fixed. The world we live in hews much closer to “Network” than “The Newsroom.” (Even Mr. Sorkin cheats on his own premise, tilting piously left in his choice of targets: the Koch brothers, the gun lobby, the Tea Party and Wall Street bankers, even though Will McAvoy is nominally a Republican.)

Mr. Sorkin wants to believe that giving people what they need to know instead of what they want to know is a worthy way to run a news network. And as someone steeped in the world of entertainment, he knows it would probably never work.

“I think the Will McAvoy that existed the minute before the show begins would be very successful,” he said. “The Will McAvoy that starts to come into focus by the third episode wouldn’t stand a chance.”

My idea? CNN still makes $600 million a year and should be happy that it gets a premium on cable systems because its global news resources are still seen as essential. Leave the Tot Mom to others and stick to coming up with a well-cooked, nutritious news diet. Why not ride through the news cycle with some dignity and feed a loyal, reliable audience, standing by for when the world threatens to blow apart and ratings skyrocket?

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com; Twitter: @carr2n