This is so true!

Except for me, of course, who keeps a freakishly neat desk. But I will attest to the general messiness of newsrooms...and people stealing my pens. Oh yeah, and I'm not kidding, I just threw away a dead plant. This guy has it dead on!

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The myth of a neat newsroom -- exposed!

Peter Hartlaub
Thursday, March 8, 2007

Hollywood filmmakers are big fakers. This becomes especially clear when they create a movie or a television show about your chosen profession.

Whether you're a doctor watching "Grey's Anatomy" (doesn't anybody at this hospital ever do rounds?), a lawyer watching "Law & Order" (how did they get from an arrest to a murder trial in three days?) or some guy on a deserted island watching "Lost" (what are these people doing for clean underwear? And why doesn't anybody have scurvy?), the problems are in the details.

Which is why I could never totally get into "Zodiac," an otherwise solid movie that happens to take place inside The Chronicle. Despite good acting, a fascinating story and a great director, the reporters' work spaces are way too tidy. From television comedies such as "Ugly Betty" to big-budget movies such as "The Devil Wears Prada," directors and production designers seem incapable of re-creating the gravity-defying clutter that fills most American newsrooms.

The first thing they always get wrong is the desks, which in "Zodiac" are neatly organized with metal book ends and carefully marked manila folders. In real life, newspaper reporters just lie down a few of their heavier books horizontally to keep the others from falling, or they cram everything into the shelf tightly so all solid matter surrounding it is unable to move, like a well-played game of Tetris. Sure, a few desks are organized, but many others dot the newsroom like little islands of compost -- resembling the living room of one of those crazy guys who never throws anything away.

This isn't saying that all newspaper desktops are festering piles of decomposing pulp. But if I'm an opossum who has been recently displaced by construction work, I'm going to the nearest newsroom and making a home within the work space of one of the cops or courtroom reporters. You could burrow a basketball-size hole, feed off half-eaten ham sandwiches and birthday cake and raise a nice opossum family.

The typical journalist's work area will also include at least three of the following:
-- One dead plant, partially covered by a pile of used reporter's notebooks.
-- A bunch of stuff the ergonomics consultant dropped off two years ago, in an unopened pile.
-- Several posters of Giants and 49ers players who have long since been traded or released.
-- A movie poster that was an inside joke between two other staff members -- both of whom quit or retired at least seven years ago.

That last one may sound strange, but it holds true at almost every newspaper I've worked at. I just took a three-minute hike around The Chronicle, and found movie memorabilia for "Dirty Dancing," "Elektra" and -- I swear to God I'm not making this up -- a full-size poster from the Harrison Ford-in-Amish country thriller "Witness."

Messy desks and random decor aren't the only things that television and the movies get wrong about newsrooms. "Absence of Malice" suggested that a reporter could get a story into the paper without any of her editors knowing about it. Several movies have reinforced the idea that a beat reporter can just drop everything for months at a time. And some journalists on TV shows do no work at all. In 10 combined seasons of "Suddenly Susan" and "Just Shoot Me," did Brooke Shields or Laura San Giacomo write or edit a single story?

Next, there's the alternate reality in Drew Barrymore's "Never Been Kissed," where copy editors have their own offices. Every group of copy editors I've worked with is lined up in two evenly distributed rows of tightly packed cubicles, like a team of basketball players flying in coach.

Over the years, a few journalism movies have gotten the little things right. "All the President's Men" is hallowed ground. I'm told by multiple colleagues that "Deadline USA" with Humphrey Bogart was a good film, deftly handling the clutter issue. And occasionally, an otherwise forgettable movie will display a keen eye for journalism culture.

"True Crime," one of the worst Clint Eastwood-directed movies in recent years, fails as a thriller, but works OK as a tribute to crusty old guy journalists. While the plot -- Eastwood as an Oakland newspaper reporter trying to prove a death row inmate's innocence -- has problems, his character's held-together-with-duct-tape convertible and general neglect of loved ones in favor of work is spot on.

Even less serious movies such as "Spider-Man" can include knowing nods to reporting culture. Although this may be a case of the cart pushing the horse, every journalist on the planet has had at least one boss who talks exactly like J. Jonah Jameson. ("Hoffman! Run down to the patent office and copyright the name 'Green Goblin.' I want a quarter every time someone says it.")

The newsroom in "Zodiac," however, seems like a completely foreign place, even though the building it depicts is one I walk through every day. While I admittedly wasn't alive when the events in "Zodiac" begin, the portrayal of a journalist's work space seems off -- something that was confirmed by a few veterans here.

In "Zodiac," Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr., is clearly supposed to be the "messy one." This is conveyed to the audience by six or seven balled-up pieces of typing paper on his desk. Almost every other work space in the movie has a Nurse Ratched-like dedication to orderliness, with neatly stacked books and cups that are well-stocked with pens and pencils.

I steal all of my pens from Tim Goodman's side of our shared office, one of the penalties suffered by the handful of reporters who keep neat work spaces. And our desks? You could gather every piece of paper on every one of the rows and rows of desks in "Zodiac," pile them onto one surface -- and it still would be shamed by one of our messier cubicles.

Here are a few suggestions for the next Hollywood director who wants to make a movie about a newsroom. Just get the last one right and I'll be happy.

More birthday cakes: At any given moment at every newspaper I've worked at, there are three separate groups of people singing "Happy Birthday." It's like working at Chevy's, except without a constant flow of fresh tortillas. Any journalism movie worth a damn needs to have at least one pile of frosting-encrusted paper plates.

Fewer hot people: Before "Zodiac" started, a trailer ran for the movie "Perfect Stranger," where Halle Berry plays an investigative reporter. In addition to Robert Redford in "All the President's Men," other incredibly beautiful actors depicting newspaper reporters include Julia Roberts ("I Love Trouble") and Hayden Christensen ("Shattered Glass"). In reality, the average journalist is charitably a 4.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Start your casting with Larry David and Shelley Duvall, and avoid anybody who ever did a guest spot on "Friends."

Kill the plants: Another niggling detail that "Zodiac" got wrong: The movie version of the Chronicle newsroom has a small greenhouse worth of thriving flora. In the typical newsroom, there will usually be a maximum of two healthy plants, and 47 others in varying states of death and decay. Kill the plants, and your movie will flourish.

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com.