On the plus side, his middle name inspired a great "Simpsons" character: "All the President's Men"

As you may know, my day job involves a slightly older medium than this "Internet" everyone's talking about. I'm talking about Ye Olde Newspaper, and after going through a bit of a rough patch at work recently, it was nice to stumble across arguably the best journalism movie ever made.

In other words, if this doesn't convince you of the power of the press and the good it can do, well, just turn your TV to Fox News and smash the remote.

I had seen "All the President's Men" at least once before, but it had been several years, and like I said, it's nice to be inspired now and then. True, the newspaper world has changed a tad since the early '70s -- more on that in a bit -- but the basic principle stands: reveal the truth, and if you become famous along the way, so be it.

Made in 1976, the movie charts how two reporters at The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, started investigating a break-in at National Democratic Headquarters and uncovered a much larger conspiracy that led all the way to the President, Richard Milhous Nixon, who ultimately resigned. Not bad in a day's work, huh?

What's great about this movie is that it doesn't try to do too much. We start with the break-in, then meet Woodward (Robert "Sneakers" Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin "Sphere" Hoffman) on the job. No need for personal background so we can be "invested" in the characters. I hate that crap in today's movies. I'm thinking of Will Smith waking up, playing music and taking a shower at the start of "I, Robot." So what? (Seriously, keep the butt off the screen, Fresh Prince.)

Also, director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman don't try to cram the whole arc of Watergate into the movie. The best stuff is at the beginning, when it's far from certain that these two guys -- who didn't have big reps at the Post -- would find the truth. That allows all sorts of shoe-leather work and phone calls, which -- surprise, surprise -- is how you get great stories.

Even at a running time of 2 hours and 18 minutes, the movie moves along briskly. We get the reporting, the debates with editors, the blowback from top officials ... it's interesting, tense stuff, especially since it's a true story. Redford and Hoffman are both good -- the former aloof, the latter cocky, both wrestling with doubt at one time or another. There also are solid supporting players in Jack Warden as their immediate boss, Hal Holbrook as anonymous source Deep Throat and Stephen Collins as a pivotal source.

Best of all, though, is the man who plays editor Ben Bradlee, Jason Robards. Oh, man, is he good. Robards nails the role of "higher-up who seems indifferent but really can zero in on the important stuff." His Oscar is well-deserved. As for the movie, it lost the Best Picture award to "Rocky," and I'm still not sure if that was right. On one hand, you have the defining tale of the fall of an American president. On the other, you have the movie that eventually allowed Mr. T and Hulk Hogan to appear in the same film. Call it a coin flip.