Ron Howard's Film, The Paper

This paper is an examination of some basic concepts of organizational communications, using examples from the workplace depicted in Ron Howard's movie, The Paper. This film, set in the newsroom of a major New York City tabloid, provides interesting examples of a distinctive corporate culture and the communication process at work. Three of its principal characters are managers, and their interrelationships demonstrate contrasting leadership styles, showing some of the different ways in which managers try to communicate organizational goals and motivate employees.

William W. Neher (1997) notes, "Organizing requires getting people together to accomplish some purpose" (p. 19). The people in the office depicted in The Paper (1994) have come together in order to produce a daily tabloid. Although some of the individuals working at the fictitious New York Sun are concerned with communicating effectively and accurately with their reading public, the organization's real purpose is to sell newspapers. To do this, the organization needs to print articles, features, and headlines that as many readers as possible will want to read. The organization is competing for readership with other tabloids who are trying to do the same thing: whoever has the catchiest, flashiest, most compelling front headline is likely to win the race that day. The organization will succeed only if it is able to win a significant number of times over the year. The Sun has been struggling.

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opposite corner of the grid is Clark, an ambitious former reporter who has risen rapidly to management level by focusing exclusively on production and ignoring the concerns of the people around her. She is a classic "9,1"; Blake and Mouton (1985) describe her style as resting "on the assumption that there is an inevitable contradiction between the organization's needs for productivity and the needs of people" (p. 19). She is so focused on her power that she is unable to accommodate the humanity of those with whom she works. In the film's climax, she is concerned only with the cost to the organization were she to allow Hackett to stop the presses and print a more accurate front page story. She is convinced that getting the newspaper printed on time, with a compelling but erroneous front headline, is more important than spending thousands of extra dollars and delaying delivery in order to print the truth that her reporters have put themselves on the line to dig up after the paper's daily deadline. Interestingly, her logic is at fault. Spending the extra money and time in order to print a sensationally exclusive story turns out to make the Sun stand out from its competitors. If Clark were only concerned with production, she mi

Category: Film - R