Director Oana Martisca shares the lived moments that shaped News Without a Newsroom and why local reporting remains a civic necessity.
NEW YORK — I arrived in New York on my birthday, six years ago, a few days before MLK Day. The taxi pulled away from the curb. The radio played I have a dream. Not the part people quote. A line in the middle. Plain. Unadorned. It cut through the cold like a truth you already knew but had not said aloud.
I had come from a post‑communist country where the sky hung low and the future felt rationed. New York rose in glass and steel. Skyscrapers like open declarations. They promised that a life could be built floor by floor if you had the will to climb.
Then the world shifted. The pandemic emptied the streets. Sirens replaced traffic. People stayed inside and counted the days. In that silence, the city felt fragile. The systems we trusted showed their seams. Information became a lifeline, and it frayed fast.
When the protests began, the streets filled again. Black Lives Matter signs in the air. Voices carrying through masks. It was a second kind of emergency — one born of history, not disease. The two crises ran side by side. One asked us to stay apart. The other demanded we stand together. Both exposed how much we rely on clear, honest reporting to understand what is happening around us.
But the newsrooms were thinning. Meetings went uncovered. Decisions passed quietly. Rumors traveled faster than facts. People tried to fill the gaps — volunteers with phones, neighbors with newsletters, anyone who believed a community should know itself. Their work mattered. It was also fragile. A patch on a sinking hull.
While making News Without a Newsroom, I saw how quickly a place can lose its memory. How power grows in the dark. How silence is not empty but occupied. Information is not a luxury. It is structure. And when it fails, it fails the way birds do when they strike the mirrored windows of skyscrapers at dawn — drawn to a reflection they mistake for open sky, hitting hard, then falling out of sight while the building still looks perfect from the street. MLK warned against the comfort of delay. He said the time to act is now. He was right. We cannot wait for the market to fix this. We cannot wait for someone else to care more than we do. The cost of waiting is already here.
The work ahead is not grand. It is steady. It is the kind of work that keeps a city standing: record the meeting, ask the question, publish the truth, hold the line. Floor by floor. Word by word. Action by action — the only way anything holds.
The skyline still shines. But the interior needs repair. And the repair must begin now.
As filmmakers, we’re no longer just making films. We’re holding up a light in a world that forgets faster than it learns. Journalists hold the collective consciousness of a community. When a crisis hits, attention narrows, illusions fall away, and our values come into view with a clarity we rarely allow ourselves in ordinary times.
In a world where news is constantly evolving and the truth is often obscured, the role of journalism as the collective guardian keeper of our consciousness has never been more crucial. The decline of local journalism continues to threaten the fabric of our society, “News Without a Newsroom” serves as a wake-up call for communities to recognize the importance of supporting and preserving local news outlets. And as Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”
The risk is not only in the crisis itself, but in the habits it leaves behind. When people grow used to gaps in information, when self‑censorship becomes the path of least resistance, a community begins to accept what it once challenged. Because once a community stops challenging what matters, the drift is almost invisible at first. Standards soften. Expectations lower. The space where public life once lived begins to thin. What was once a shared reality becomes a collection of private guesses. That is how a society forgets itself—not in a single moment, but in the slow erosion of attention, the quiet surrender to whatever fills the silence. The only antidote is to look directly, to insist on seeing, to keep the record alive.
About News Without a Newsroom
News Without a Newsroom is a documentary examining the collapse of local journalism and the civic consequences that follow. Through on‑the‑ground reporting and intimate stories, the film explores how communities navigate information gaps and what is lost when oversight disappears.
About Oana Martisca
Oana Martisca is a documentary filmmaker and media strategist focused on the intersection of information, power, and public life. Her work centers on the systems that shape civic understanding and the people who fight to preserve it.
Media Contact
Oana Martisca
Email: oana@8finite.com
Phone: (917) 415‑7879
Website: www.8finite.com
Content originally created and written by Oana Martisca.
