Reporter
Director: Eric Metzgar
Logline: Follows Nick Kristof on the current state of journalism and the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Synopsis: Journalism, as we know it, is in trouble. In the Internet age, newspapers and magazines face near extinction. Newsrooms are shrinking, with foreign bureaus hardest hit. With the rise of blogs, in-depth coverage is being replaced by opinion. If current trends continue, we can expect that in ten years most news organizations will be fully devoted to a round-the-clock regurgitation of “info-tainment.”
With the loss of real journalism comes the loss of knowledge and understanding. A healthy and democratic nation will not be able to function, let alone flourish, on this diet of limited information.
REPORTER is a feature documentary about Nicholas Kristof, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, who almost single-handedly put the crisis in Darfur on the world map. The film puts the viewer in Kristof’s pocket, revealing the man and his methods, and just how and why real reporting is vital to our democracy, our world-awareness, and our capacity to be a force for good. But REPORTER has a second agenda. By tracking a newsman, we track his news.