It could have been awkward, interviewing Hollywood bigwigs after writing a column that said their new show made me wince.

But Greg Daniels, Michael Koman and I had a great conversation this week about how their appreciation of newspapers informs “The Paper,” a spinoff of “The Office,” streaming on NBCUniversal’s Peacock.

They created and wrote “The Paper” and Daniels developed the U.S. version of “The Office.”

“The Paper” depicts the Toledo Truth Teller, a newspaper hobbled by parsimonious corporate owners. Just a few newsroom staffers are left when Ned, an idealistic new editor, arrives. How the work gets done is comical but the setting is all too realistic.

I particularly wanted to ask Daniels and Koman how they communicated the importance of local journalism and standards in their “mockumentary” without making it boring.

Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:

Q: I try to not be too preachy writing about local journalism. People get tired of the little violins.

Daniels: Yeah, we try to, too. That’s what we discuss a lot … we want to be entertaining, because if you’re too preachy on the subject, you’re going to drive people away. So we’re on the same subject, but we’re trying to keep it a little bit light while still writing about the same stuff.

Q: How did you find the balance between satirizing newspapers and respecting the mission? It’s hard to do that and still be funny.

Koman: I really did not find that there was ever an effort to satirize. To me, it was mostly realistic about the state of the industry.

Q: We deserve some satire, that’s fine.

Daniels: Yeah, let’s see. We did original research, we went to newspapers, we talked to journalists, we did a lot of reading — from college Journalism 101 books to more theoretical books about what’s to be done.

To me, the mission that Ned is trying to do in Toledo, by doing local, objective, original reporting, is the best path forward for newspapers, because I feel like there’s no real value in just repeating stuff that was reported on by somebody else.

I don’t know if that economically makes sense. But as a consumer of news, there are certain things that you find super irritating, and we’ve pointed that out in the show like, you know, the articles that just keep going and going.

Q: The Truth Teller’s endlessly scrolling, online article about Ben Affleck?

Daniels: Yes. I think a lot of those things are accurate.

Koman: Most of the things that we would make fun of with journalism have to do with digital.

Daniels: We do have a lot trying to defend paper journalism, but it does sometimes get bogged down into the preachiness. For instance, Ned had a comparison between marriage and publishing and how print, you can’t go back and quickly change it if you’ve made a mistake. There’s a lot of stuff like that that we ended up having to remove for time.

There’s a theory in film editing that even if you remove the shot of the blue light bulb, that the blue light is in the rest of the scenes, that it illuminates. I feel like when we shot all that stuff, the actors all heard it, and we all had it on stage, and their intentions were informed by all that good stuff even if it doesn’t make it to the final cut.

Koman: But Greg, tell me if I’m wrong. I never thought about it like satirical in the sense that we were trying to make a comment so much as that it’s a character comedy. And (managing editor) Esmeralda represents, in a lot of ways, the worst impulses of journalism, and Ned represents the most idealistic.

Daniels: I agree, yes, it’s not a satire. It’s basically a play, right? People have different points of view inside the play, and the play debates ideas, right? The fact that the ideas are relevant should have the audience lean in a bit and care more about the debate.

Q: Did you grow up with newspapers at home?

Daniels: My parents still have a subscription to The New York Times but buy the New York Post, mostly for the sports, so both those New York papers are always in the house when I go visit them.

Koman: I grew up in San Diego. The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times were the three papers that were there every day, and The Wall Street Journal.

Q: Most people watching your show probably won’t have grown up in newspaper households. Were you thinking about that, that it might be the introduction to newspapers for a lot of people, particularly younger viewers? Did that affect how you approach the subject?

Daniels: Well, we’re pro-newspaper, and the lead character is very pro-newspaper. He tangles with, for instance, a blogger, which was based on when we visited Toledo. At the hotel we asked, “How do we learn about local stuff?” And they said, “Oh, there’s this blogger.”

Q: Ouch.

Daniels: Yeah. So we point out that he can publish stuff, but he doesn’t have either the ethical or resource training to fact check anything. Our characters become kind of competitive with him and they sucker him by sending him a fake press release that he just uncritically publishes. Obviously that’s a comedy story for us, but the way we came up with it was thinking about, what are the advantages that a paper would have over a blog.

Koman: The responsibilities that the paper has that a blog doesn’t have.

Q: After creating a virtual newspaper, what are your thoughts on how to sustain and grow real newspapers and local journalism?

Koman: I’ve gotta say it’s so beyond my level of understanding. In terms of what we do, I will say there are so many great stories set in newspapers, about the press. I think it’s kind of a nice American tradition. In my tiny little corner of what I do understand, I hope that that’s something that kind of excites people about it, the prospect of seeing yourself in that line of work, because I do think there’s something romantic and exciting about it.

Daniels: I would add that all of the journalism textbooks that I read make the point that the urge for journalism is incredibly basic to humanity and incredibly old, and is tied up in knowing what your community is up to and knowing what other people are doing, and that journalism itself is very, very important.

And the practice of journalism has some best practices and ethical considerations. If journalists are following those, it might not matter if they’re online or not, but if the audience is aware of those, they’ll hold the journalists to a standard. We’re optimistic that journalism doesn’t go away. It might be the practice of it might be better at certain times and not at other times. We have inside of our show a documentary within the documentary, which is shot in 1971 when the paper was really operating on all cylinders.

Q: I love that stuff.

Daniels: Yeah, we do too, and the contrast that that sets up in your mind as to how, if you expect the results of those great journalistic crusading times of Watergate and everything, you have to devote the resources the way it was being done in that documentary. So maybe the best thing our show could do is make people emotional about the old days and maybe optimistic, or inspired to do something in their own world.

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.