A good documentary on the days of great newspapers, and how it could be better

• The 2019 HBO documentary Breslin and Hamill is a great look at the heyday of newspapers, especially in New York City w/ its multiple competing dailies, and a sorrowful reminder to all of how far we've come, or descended, since that day, with newsrooms today having just a fraction of the staff size and capacity, and with the concomitant loss in particular of coverage of state and local news (Rhode Islanders are still fortunate that the Providence Journal does a good job on state and Providence news). The doc focuses on the two NY newspapers columnists, sometimes competitors and sometimes stablemates, in the New York press from the 50s through the 80s or 90s - Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill - two guys w/similar backgrounds, working-class Irish w/ no formal education beyond high school - who learned on the job and rose to the top, each in a different manner: Breslin mainly through his street smarts and his lifelong connection to neighborhoods and tough guys and w/ his uncanny knack for finding the unique angle on major stories (e.g., his interview on the day of the JFK funeral w/ the guy who dug the gravesite) and w/ his sympathy for the underdog; Hamill was the more poetic of the two, more known for setting a mood and capturing a nuance, and unlike Breslin he rose up into management, becoming a beloved editor in chief at the NY Post. The doc includes late-life interviews w/ the two men together and much great archival footage that give us the feel for life in the eccentric, smoky, alcohol-reeking newsrooms of old. Plus there are many interviews w/ those who knew the two men (JB died two years ago), including family members, colleagues, and media critics and scholars. And that's my major concern w/ this movie - it makes its point and then some, it's just too damn long. Heed Hemingway's warning : Kill your darlings. And that's so easy and unpainful today: why not trim all of the talking head interviews and make them available as supplements, full length if need be, to those who want to know more, as Criterion does w/ its film library? You'd have a great 90 minute film w/ many extras. As is it's fine to but gets tedious by the end.