Sarah M Vasquez

I freaking loved The Newsroom pilot. Are we surprised? You shouldn’t.

Reading the social media outlets, the show seems to divide the journalism world. At first, I was just happy there’s a show about journalism, but after watching the pilot, I love it even more.

Ok, I’ll admit. The show is not perfect. I wasn’t feeling some moments and honestly, breaking the BP oil spill came together too smoothly (if only that would happen with all our stories…). But like I said, I’m really happy there’s a show about journalism. Granted I don’t work in broadcast news, I’m still intrigued. After all, a story is still a story. The main difference here is the medium in which the story is presented.

Some of the complaints from the fellow journalists that I read online is that it’s overdramatic. Really? Come on, y’all. This job may have more moments than not when it’s pretty freaking cool, but let’s be real. If they wanted to capture the job to as real life as possible, there would be a lot of this…

and this…

and this…

Drawings by yours truly.

Who wants to watch that for an hour? I don’t.

Anyway, here are three reasons why I liked this show (so far…) in case you wanted to know:

1. It’s well-written. No surprise there as Aaron Sorkin is behind it. It takes some mad skills to write a movie about Facebook interesting enough to keep my attention and win an Academy Award for it. So I think the show’s in good hands.

One of my favorites one-liners from the show:

Credit: Oakmonster

2. The breaking news scene. Oh.my.god.

So I’ve been going through a journalism funk lately. It happens. But I was so far down the rabbit hole that I was starting to question whether I still want to do journalism, which isn’t a good time considering I intend to graduate in December.

But don’t fret. My degree will not be useless. At least, not in a “I’m over this” kinda of way. This show helped me realize that yes, I still want to do journalism. KTSW and ONA Austin also had a hand in this, but nevertheless, the scene when they are breaking the news about the BP oil spill made me nerd out in ways that really shouldn’t have unless you are a journalism nerd. When the alert came in and they started putting the story together, I felt that adrenaline rush with them. The fact that I would get excited as they found out more details (OMG! He just admitted that on air!?!) or that I wanted to be in the newsroom with them getting in on that action made me realize, hey, maybe this is exactly what I should be doing with my life. Thanks The Newsroom.

3. Three words. John Gallagher, Jr. Yep, this point is about a guy. He plays a journalism nerd! An awkward journalism nerd at that. He can sing, so well in fact that he won a Tony for Spring Awakening, and we all know I’m a big musical theater nerd. And he was in Love Monkey. Hello. That’s my dream boy in a box person.

He had me at first trip. 

Credit: brannells

Did you guys feel that? I just swooned… again.

So I’m willing to give this show a chance before I start throwing haterade at the screen. There have been many shows that I love that didn’t win me over with just the pilot. After all, a TV pilot’s purpose is to introduce the show: who are the characters, the overall theme of the show, what’s the conflict, etc. I’ll give it a couple of episodes before I make that final decision whether it’s worth staying for the rest of the season.

Although, by the looks of this…

…I think I’m going to stay.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the pilot yet, the entire thing is on YouTube. Get on that.