Sumith Prasad
In Netflix’s romantic comedy film ‘Players,’ The Brooklyn Ace is a New York City-based dying newspaper that plans to let go several of its workers to survive. One of the employees is Mack, who covers local sports. Realizing that her job is on the line, Mack sets out to protect her position with a feature about the New Yorkers’ favorite sports experiences. The newspaper company is presented as a potential victim of the dying print journalism with workers like Mack trying their best to safeguard their future. Like the movie, The Brooklyn Ace is also fictional. However, the company’s slow death is an accurate portrayal of reality!
The Reality Behind The Brooklyn Ace
Even though The Brooklyn Ace is a fictional newspaper, it can be seen as a representative of local newspapers that have been struggling or slowly dying in the country. According to research conducted by Northwestern University’s Medill School, an average of five newspapers are shutting down their operation every two weeks. As the film progresses, it is revealed that The Brooklyn Ace’s executives had to decide to shut down a significant part of their sports coverage, threatening the fate of Mack, who has been covering local sports for the publication. Similarly, thousands of journalists are facing severe challenges at their workplaces and the movie leads our attention to this concern.
In reality, small newspapers are not the only ones that are struggling. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times confirmed that the company would lay off around 115 journalists, cutting down its newsroom staff by more than 20%. Last year, The Washington Post decided to cut around 240 jobs across the company to deal with the lack of subscriptions. The present condition of Business Insider is not optimistic either as the company announced last month that it would cut 8% of its staff as part of a restructuring. Journalism is dying severely and the experiences of Mack as an employee of The Brooklyn Ace are not drastically different from what employees at these companies have been dealing with.
Although ‘Players’ is a romantic comedy, it invites our attention to the unignorable reality behind the field of journalism. As more and more news outlets and publications are finding it hard to remain alive without crushing the hopes and dreams of their employees, Mack’s tale is relevant and rooted in reality. Through The Brooklyn Ace, screenwriter Whit Anderson reveals what it means to be a journalist and publication at these troubling times.
Read More: Do Mack and Adam End Up Together in Players?
