Journalism is boring, so why is FX making a New York Times docuseries?

Splinter

FX this morning announced a docuseries called The Weekly based on The New York Times' daily reporting (and its daily reporting podcast, The Daily), joining the upcoming Showtime documentary on The Times titled The Fourth Estate. The problem, as the failed 2006 Bravo reality show Tabloid Wars proved, is that journalism doesn't make for compelling television -- unless it's fictionalized, says Hamilton Nolan. "The journalism that you consume is the interesting part of the media. Everything that goes into making the journalism is a f*cking job," he says. Nolan adds: "If you want to make a fictional movie or TV series about hard-charging, hard-drinking swashbuckling reporters who are constantly rushing around making urgent phone calls to high level top secret moles that they later f*ck, forbiddenly, though their lives may be in danger, that’s fine, and also it’s called House of Cards Season One. But if you think that you are going to make a documentary that is gripping and stunning and intriguing about the behind-the-scenes action of newspaper reporting: you are not. If you insist on making a nonfiction TV show on this topic, you can either have it be accurate (extremely boring) or exciting (fictional). Not both." ALSO: The Weekly might work because journalists have become characters in the national drama of the Trump presidency.