'The Paper' Hits Close to Home

Former Tribune newspaperman finds plenty to laugh about in new Peacock series

BY KIRBY SPROULS // POSTED SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

On my first day at the South Bend Tribune, Harold Lowe, a longtime editor, grabbed a freshly-printed paper and declared “another daily miracle.”

Harold was the Tribune's wire editor when I arrived at there in 1989. It was a time when newspapers still enjoyed the large staffs and budgets essential for that miracle, not to mention hungry subscribers and willing advertisers. But, of course, those key ingredients are disappearing... as are newspapers.

Northwestern University's State of Local News Project last year reported that since 2005 more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. More than two papers die every week while others are moving from daily to weekly format or ending their print editions altogether.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, just announced it will stop its print edition at year's end, going to a digital-only model — which brings to mind a story. An Atlanta Falcons executive, apparently not a fan of the newspaper, once lamented to my brother-in-law that he always enjoyed backing his car over that paper as he left his house every morning but the paper had become so thin he could no longer feel it.

Locally, the skinny South Bend Tribune, gutted by layoffs and buyouts, stopped printing a Saturday edition a few years ago. The other six days it mails the paper — printed a day earlier — to subscribers. Sure, it's old news but, hey, they no longer are relying on the 12-year-old.

Some of us mourn the decline of local newspapers, if not for their digital-only model then certainly for their lack of news. But at least the industry's hapless circumstances provide fodder for the smart, new television sitcom 'The Paper,' streaming on Peacock.

Produced by the same folks who gave us 'The Office' a couple decades ago, 'The Paper' is a mockumentary on the fictional Toledo Truth Teller, a once thriving newspaper that had more than 1,000 employees and won major awards. But it has sunk to such depths that the newsroom consists of a handful of volunteer reporters with so little experience that one reporter suggests they shadow the high school student newspaper staff visiting their newsroom.

Truth Teller management even debates whether to pay their reporters or simply return to using all wire stories, the way it was before the arrival of new editor-in-chief Ned Sampson, played by Domhnall Gleeson.

Ned, who as a kid dreamed of being Clark Kent, not Superman, was actually an “amazing” toilet paper salesman before he was transferred to the Truth Teller by its owner, Enervate, a paper supply company.

Enervate produces office supplies, toilet paper (Softies), toilet seat protectors and newspapers … “and that is in order of quality,” according to the company strategist. The company purchased Dunder Mifflin — a name familiar to fans of 'The Office' — and moved from Scranton, Pa., to Toledo, Ohio, where the toilet paper and newspaper staffs share office space.

 

 

'The Paper' comically depicts a struggling newspaper trying to survive in the online world. It succeeds with clever scripts and an endearing cast in its 10 half-hour episodes. The lampoon style obviously exaggerates the plight of newspapers, but even the most preposterous moments generally mirror challenges faced by newspapers.

For instance, the Truth Teller competes with a local blogger, a high-schooler no less. There is a newsroom vs. owner squabble over printing a story about the paper company's “flushable” sanitary gloves plugging the city sewer (“Softies clog Toledo” is the headline). And instead of running unverified news releases as the click-bait happy online editor would have it, the reporters test products themselves.

That online editor, the over-the-top Esmeralda, played by Sabrina Impacciatore, feels threatened by the Ned's arrival and sniffs at the printed edition as only “for those to have something to frame when they are mentioned.”

Others in cast include Oscar Nuñez, a carryover from 'The Office' who plays Oscar Martinez, an accountant; Chelsea Frei, who plays Mare, the only reporter with journalism experience, having written for the “Stars and Stripes” while in the Army; and English comedian/actor Tim Key, whose Ken Davies is the corporate strategist with “strategies” that usually backfire.

There was a time when the premise of a TV show poking fun at newspapers might have stung a little, but not any longer. As much as I love the romantic notion of printed newspapers — remember when your newsstand carried piles of various newspapers? — that business model has ended. Grumbling about that change is akin to bitching about the portal and NIL in college sports. It's pointless.

While the show's episodes are a bit uneven, the weakest one or two still elicit out-loud laughs. The show is enjoyable — just like working for a newspaper was and, perhaps, still is. And the Truth Teller's assortment of oddball characters is no different than any newsroom in which I ever worked.

The New Yorker called the show a “love letter to newspapers.” Amid the silliness, the show underscores the importance of newspapers — past and present.

Black-and-white film of the Truth Teller's glory days is interspersed throughout, stressing the historical significance of newspapers and its permanence in this digital era. Meanwhile, these underdog reporters, working for an owner who doesn't care about journalism, begin to sense the responsibility they've inherited and respond as a team.

Miraculously, the result is a funny yet meaningful TV show.

Kirby Sprouls is retired after working 42 years as a reporter and editor — covering both news and sports — at four Indiana newspapers, most recently the South Bend Tribune.