HE'S THE IDEALIST IN CHIEF

Domhnall Gleeson on playing a dedicated newsman with humor and admiration in Peacock's 'The Paper'

- BY YVONNE VILLARREAL

COULD DOMHNALL GLEESON be the savior of local journalism? OK, maybe that's a sensational oversellbut his latest character knows that news stories need a hook to draw readers in fast. We're trying.

The 42-year-old Irish actor has built an impressive and diverse career, often playing people in precarious situations: a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to change his past in hopes of improving his future in the heartfelt and whimsical "About Time"; the leader of a group of fur trappers working in unsettled territory in the Midwest who gets caught up in a gruesome fight for survival in "The Revenant"; or a software programmer selected to be part of an experiment with a female robot with humanlike qualities in "Ex Machina." Now, he's stepping into the turbulent, you-have-to-laugh-to-keep-from-crying experience of being in the newspaper biz. In Peacock's "The Paper," premiering Sept. 4, Gleeson plays Ned Sampson, a nerdy, well-meaning and enviably hopeful guy who has just been installed as editor in chief of the Toledo Truth Teller. His qualifications?

Well, he used to sell cardboard and toilet paper, and he's a nepo baby with a journalism degree. And he's coming in with earnest intentions: to motivate a small staff that has grown restless and dissatisfied with their profession-succumbing to the unsavory demands of the job in 2025, like selecting a wire story about Elizabeth Olsen's nighttime skin routine only to discover it exceeds the allotted print space - and revive, or in some cases kick off, their desire to do responsible local journalism that delivers useful and effectual information to the community.

"When I was a kid, I didn't want to be Superman; I wanted to be Clark Kent," Ned says in the first episode. "Because to me, Clark is the real superhero. He's saving the world, too, by working at a newspaper. And that, to me, is much more noble and much more achievable, and I love that."