In 2005, a documentary crew settles into a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the rest is history (or at least comedy). Twenty years later, they return… but with a different zip code. This time, the story moves away from stacks of paper to a local newspaper. In 2025, The Paper (Peacock) doesn’t deliver “Dunder Mifflin 2.0” but instead a real – and uncomfortable – portrait of journalism in decline.

Greg Daniels’ new series revisits the formula that made The Office a phenomenon: mockumentary, comedy, and workplace chemistry. But this time, the focus shifts to a setting that has undergone some of the biggest technological upheavals of recent decades, for better or worse.

In the same building where hundreds of people once worked to produce the daily edition of a newspaper, today the fictional Toledo Truth Teller newsroom barely occupies a single floor, which it shares with the toilet paper company Softees. A 1971 documentary portrays a vibrant office: the constant clacking of typewriters, ringing telephones, and a newsroom crowded with journalists, backed by correspondents across the country and around the world. In 2025, the scene is very different and reflects a common trend in newsrooms: more accountants and salespeople than journalists.

The Paper’s intro sums it up with a bit of irony: a list of ways to use newspapers, and none of them involve reading them. From packing stuff for a move to crafting a makeshift dog bath, printed newspaper has always found a second life. What it doesn’t find so easily anymore are readers willing to sit down with it to find out what’s going on.

The Paper gives us an augmented reality from the perspective of a local newspaper. While some media outlets still rely on primary sources and produce original reports, others seem comfortable publishing anything. The Toledo Truth Teller falls into the second group: it has only two journalists – Mare (Chelsea Frei), who once worked for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes and now merely copies and pastes other people’s news stories. And Barry (Duane Shepard Sr.), a longtime employee whose best years are behind him and who barely pays attention to what is happening around him. At the head of the team is Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore of White Lotus), a clickbait fanatic and former reality show contestant about marriage at first sight.

When Ned (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives as the new editor-in-chief, he has a clear mission: to recover the original reports. Until now, Ned had worked in corporate sales, although he trained in journalism. His true vocation calls him back, because deep down, he always wanted to be Clark Kent. The problem is that the budget is too tight to support the project, so he resorts to a creative solution: convincing office employees to act as journalists in their spare time, a move more typical of a salesperson.

Although The Paper reflects certain aspects of reality, it also raises an inevitable question: how many journalists are needed to cover a story? The series shows two or three reporters working on the same piece to fill the newspaper, something that hardly ever happens in practice, at least not in such a small team. Nor does it accurately portray the pace of the profession, because in a newsroom that produces original reports daily, there is no space for leisure. A real newsroom, local or not, is chaos, deadlines, and constant pressure. It lacks the calm pace of other offices where projects are developed over weeks or months: if the newspaper is printed every day, you have to write every day and a lot.

I don’t think The Paper was created to represent the journalism profession at its core, but rather to be a great comedy. Along the way, however, it accurately gets at a truth about the current state of the profession. The message is clear: in the corporate logic that dominates journalism today, quality and originality matter less than views, sales, and money.

The Paper has a great opportunity to establish itself as an intelligent comedy that, beyond laughter, shows us where we are headed. A future where people no longer read, but spend hours watching TikTok videos. Where readers avoid depth, companies only think about short-term profits, and an entire industry collapses, creating more unemployed people every year.

As a journalist, I’ve got to admit, this topic hits hard. Newspapers that once employed hundreds of people, like the fictional Toledo Truth Teller, are now writing about (or facing) closures and layoffs. Personally, I’ve gone through pay cuts and the shutdown of magazines and TV channels, and I have seen colleagues lose jobs they thought were safe. Perhaps that is why it is refreshing to see it turned into comedy: a reminder that the world is constantly changing and forcing us to adapt, whether we like it or not.

Finally, for those looking for a connection to The Office, I can only reveal one name – and it’s Latino – Oscar, played again by Oscar Nuñez. A great representative of this mockumentary universe and the paper, he knows exactly what he’s getting into and doesn’t seem willing to give the documentary crew any good material. A clever nod to fans of The Office.

The Paper premieres on September 4 on Peacock with its first four episodes. After that, they’re releasing two new episodes every Thursday.