Directed by Andrew Rossi Club, IFI, Dublin, 88 min

AT TIME OF writing, it still seemed likely that you will be able to read this review on flattened sheets of wood pulp. How bizarre.

The main concern of this engaging, if scattershot, documentary on the New York Timesis, it hardly needs to be said, the continuing assault on print media by the those unstoppable digital upstarts. Page Onecould be seen — drawing analogies from history — as a report from Berlin in mid 1943. Things look bad for the Reich, but, if total collapse does come, then this will surely be the last bastion to fall.

Though the documentary touches on many bubbling news stories, the state of the medium itself is continually a matter of concern. The fact that the editorial staff are, at the time of the film, chewing over the WikiLeaks controversy makes it harder than ever to push aside digital anxiety. Is this a source? Or is it a rival organ? One senses creaky paradigms straining to accommodate themselves to new information streams.

Shooting with a stable camera, pulling in only a few veteran talking heads, director Andrew Rossi wallows in the Times's new Renzo Piano building and finds time to detail some of the journalists' personal eccentricities. The hero, straight out of a latter-day Damon Runyon story, turns out to be the irascible, eccentric David Carr. A former junkie, now the paper's media correspondent, Carr seems all too human for this digital age.

If the film focused solely on Carr, it might have told a more easily digestible story. Unfortunately, the film-makers seem distracted by every little incident in every shadowy corner. News stories appear. They are briefly sketched out. Then they slip away in a half-formed state. We get just a few seconds on notorious Timesscandals involving Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. There is perhaps a great TV series bursting to get out of a slightly over-busy film.

Still, Page Onedoes teach us one surprising fact about American journalists. Unusually for middle- class professionals, many of them still smoke. Who'd blame them? See you on the front steps in five.