‘The Paper’”: Mocking or Paying Tribute to Community News? Metajournalistic Discourse Repairing a Broken Local News Paradigm

Karin Assman and Roberta Fiorito (Ph.D. student), “'The Paper'”: Mocking or Paying Tribute to Community News? Metajournalistic Discourse Repairing a Broken Local News Paradigm,” paper accepted for presentation at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, March 12-14, Tampa. Abstract: Even before Peacock’s mockumentary The Paper made its debut, reviewers were skeptical. In the ten-episode series about the Toledo Truth Teller, a struggling fictional local newspaper in the Midwest, one full-time editor and a staff of volunteer reporters work to keep the paper afloat. Some of the harshest criticism of the sitcom centered around local and community journalism, arguing that this was not the time to make light of the dismal situation local media was in. The fear that an already precarious local news environment is being maligned through the satirical representation in a television series was expressed not only by viewers who took to social media but also in reviews penned by media critics, journalism educators and entertainment journalists across platforms. This study is an examination of the metajournalistic discourse about The Paper, arguing that the show’s media critics are repairing a broken paradigm.