Documentary films are supposedly objective looks at a topic, a controversy, an event, a social phenomenon—but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a hero. Watching Andrew Rossi’s “Page One: Inside the New York Times,” the hero emerges in the grizzled persona of David Carr, a media and culture columnist for the Times. Carr is a former cocaine addict whose wry, almost shamanistic commentary on his colleagues, his paper and his entire profession nearly derails the focus of the documentarians, who often seem more interested in him than in the story of the Times. Ultimately, however, Carr simply becomes an enduring hero, a welcome constant in a film that presents a fascinating, if scattered, look at the story and future of contemporary journalism.

From the beginning, “Page One” faced the double-edged sword of an incredible reporting opportunity: unprecedented access to the newsroom of the famous Gray Lady for a year. The possible routes for the film were mind-boggling—and indeed, the filmmakers struggle with option paralysis. The documentary begins with a look at the Wikileaks scandal: The Times collaborated with Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange to publish parts of leaked government information, thus muddying the waters of what Wikileaks was (a source? A journalistic outlet? A competitor in the news market?) and where its reporting belonged. A fascinating line of inquiry—but one that deserves more attention than the few minutes it received in this brisk 88-minute film. Other scenes, particularly “Page One” of the title—twice-daily meetings where editorial executives make, in a few moments, decisions about the front-page, above-the-fold stories for a nation—are similarly compelling, and receive similarly short shrift.

But Rossi and his co-producer and co-writer Kate Novack have bigger fish to fry: The key inquiry in this expansive and often freewheeling film is the future of print media, and more specifically, the future of the Times itself. Here’s where Carr emerges as the sage cynic of the industry, simultaneously offering perspective (as a former crackhead raising two daughters alone on welfare, the idea of simply losing his Times job and taking home a severance package is hardly troubling) and bulldog-like defense of newspapers in general and the Times in particular. “Wow, this is a great reading experience,” he says witheringly, paging through an iPad document. “You know what this reminds me of? A newspaper.”

Carr is part of the media desk at the Times, where the film focuses most of its inquiry—a move that makes sense, but often seems almost too insider-driven, too intent on objectively reporting what might be intimately relevant, to expose much new material. For an entire year in the newsroom, “Page One” is surprisingly void of real revelation.

None of this truly affects the fact that this is a captivating fly-on-the-wall portrait of the nation’s most influential newspaper, or that its predictions about the future of print, however stale, aren’t dire. But “Page One” weakens its power by trying to do too much. “The Times deserves a better movie,” noted one of the paper’s own film critics. Given the avalanche of information, I’d say it deserves four better movies.

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