Patrick Donohue is the proudest Indiana native you're likely to find. Seriously. No one is prouder to be from a state that so many people know relatively so little about than he is. Patrick is a native of Terre Haute and a graduate of the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University. Knowing this, you might think he’d be a huge John "Cougar" Mellencamp fan, a man considered by some to be the Hoosier State's poet laureate. But you'd be wrong. In a major way. | When I saw the first trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO drama, “The Newsroom,” I had some serious reservations.
I have long been a Sorkin devotee and believe him to be the greatest writer in the history of American television. But I thought this new show and its characters bore too close a resemblance to “Sports Night,” Sorkin’s critically acclaimed ABC series about an evening sports news show and my favorite TV show of all time.
I knew I still would watch it because, frankly, I will watch anything Sorkin creates.
I even slogged through most of the woefully miscast and short-lived “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” but I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing a show that appeared so derivative of something I loved so dearly.
“The Newsroom” premiered Sunday. It was everything I hoped it would be and nothing like I feared it would be.
The show, which takes us behind the scenes at the fictional Atlantis Cable News Network, is trademark Sorkin right down to those infamous walk-and-talks, the lightning-quick dialogue and his sometimes-suffocating idealism.
As one reviewer aptly pointed out, Sorkin writes the world not as it is but how it should be.
“The Newsroom” has poignant things to say about American politics and the future of journalism, and I want to hear every word.