Hollywood film featuring journalists an Oscar favourite

Los Angeles

THEY have been whipsawed by the Web and left jobless by the thousands in round after round of layoffs and early retirements. Their public standing just barely rises above that of lobbyists and telemarketers. But against all odds, the hottest heroes in Hollywood - at least in this early stage of the Oscar hunt - are a bunch of scruffy, middle-aged newspaper journalists.

Those reporters and editors are featured in Spotlight, a forthcoming film that tells how The Boston Globe managed to uncover the sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a movie with an unusual degree of purpose and more than a whiff of nostalgia for a newspaper business that has been radically transformed since the film's action took place 14 years ago.