CLOCK LOGIC: IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR THIS MOVIE

The new movie "The Paper" displays its opening credits against a backdrop of the inner workings of an old-fashioned clock, its gears pushing rhythmically against one another. The last image before the closing credits is that of a clock.

Those shots provide tidy and instructive bookends for a pretty good story. Billed as a film about a day in the life of a New York City tabloid, "The Paper" is really about time.

I did not go to this movie expecting to write about it. That seems sort of cliche, an editor giving testimony on a film dealing with his profession. I didn't want to indulge in it.

Mind you, there are plenty of mediums that don't mind just that exercise. There are Broadway musicals produced about the producing of Broadway musicals. There are movies made about the making of movies. There are books written about the writing of books.

Still, part of the romance of any highly visible profession should be that you don't spend a lot of time talking about it. The mystique increases with each word left unsaid.

This formula is similar to E.B. White's view of analyzing humor, which he compared to dissecting a frog; it can be done, he conceded, but the frog tends to die in the process.

Besides, unless you are completely self-absorbed and don't care about the tedium you inflict on others, there is the opportunity to bore people to tears with inside anecdotes they don't have a prayer to understand or appreciate. Get stuck on an airplane next to a guy who sells shower curtain rings, finding the work fascinating and expounding on it at length, and you'll know what I mean.

That said, I decided to include a few observations about "The Paper" because it got the emotions of the business right, and they are not feelings exclusive to newspaper work.

Without reciting the plot, the movie revolves around Henry Hackett, a metro editor for a fictitious tabloid. This isn't the type of publication you find next to market checkout stands, those specializing in Elvis sightings or encounters with aliens. Instead, this is an upright if quirky newspaper that knows it readership and warms to stories about subway decapitations and headlines that end in exclamation points.

Hackett is having some day. He got three hours of sleep the night before, his newspaper got beat on a big story by the competing tabloids, the office air conditioner isn't working, his wife is nearly ready to deliver their first child and he must make a decision on whether to accept a pencil-pushing job at a more prestigious and financially stable newspaper.

What I liked about the movie is that it accurately portrays some truths that I see every day in my job but that are certainly not unique to the newspaper business.

People may talk tough, may contribute a harmless lie to an argument to get their way, but ultimately most want to do the right thing, even if it means personal hardship. Sometimes your best efforts are rewarded with nothing, and other times pure luck drops a gift in your lap. The greater goals of your profession are sometimes superseded by office politics. Now and then, you'll sabotage the things that are good for you for the things that are right for you. Just when you think you've seen or heard from each of the planet's disgruntled souls, you run across one more. And just when you think your day can't get any more hectic, it does.

What the movie understands more than anything, though, is the impact time has on each of us. For a grizzled editor, it is the effect of years on his health. For a smug managing editor, wrinkled skin is the sign of time's passage. For a reporter displaced from her livelihood by pregnancy, it is the tension of a biological and professional clock ticking. For poor Hackett, it is an important and redeeming story that is shy one crucial comment and the deadline long gone.

Last fall, our news department moved into a different part of the building at 301 Broadway. It was a big undertaking and meant a lot of operational parts had to be picked up and put down fairly quickly and in some organized fashion. One oversight was a logical location for a newsroom clock, neglect that led to some staff jitters and an unattractive temporary arrangement.

It remains amazing to me how often during my day I check the time. There are jobs, I remember from my youthful employment, where the clock never seems to move, where quitting time moves toward you as though through syrup. In my current job, I can't believe how fast the clock turns.

There are movies about people who seek money. There are movies about people who seek power. In fact, though, a movie about people who seek to make peace with time has a necessary element to be far more compelling, since time is the thing that puts all humans -- rich or poor, powerful or weak -- on equal footing. I enjoyed watching Hackett spend 24 hours ... and was surprised how quickly the 112 minutes of "The Paper" went.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.