The trouble with genre films is that they often bog down in themselves.

Recently, Reality Bites wallowed in Xers' angst, Falling Down drowned in a sea of white-male frustration and Gettysburg disappeared behind a haze of cannon smoke, bad acting and fake whiskers.

Each film -- the victim of its subject -- saw no further than the interests of its enthusiasts and left the general public confused and disappointed.

But The Paper mercifully avoids this trap . . . sort of.

This new comedy/drama about newspaper life could have hypnotized itself with the glamour and guts of big-city journalism, leaving out the human side of the newsroom.

Instead The Paper is an interesting and enjoyable ride through the chaotic daily world of the New York news media.

The film is set in the fictional New York Sun (motto: The Sun shines on all of us) and centers on Henry Hackett (ably played by hyper Michael Keaton).

Hackett is a career journalist --a news junkie born with one hand on a notepad, the other on a can of Coke -- and he is facing the biggest day of his life.

Hackett has been offered an interview with the prestigious New York Sentinel (a thinly disguised New York Times with all its polish and pomposity.)

After years of laboring in the grimy, doughnut-encrusted Sun newsroom, he finally has a shot at the brass ring. And with a new baby on the way, it's an offer he can't turn down.

Or can he?

You see, no movie is complete without a few plot twists and The Paper's twists come from that day's major news story. Two white businessmen are gunned down outside a restaurant and racial slurs are painted on their car. Faster than you can say, "This film was a career move for Marisa Tomei," the cops round up their suspects -- two young black teen-agers.

But Hackett smells a rat. These two are good kids with a chance at getting out of New York. One is an honors student, the other has a scholarship to play ball . . . at Penn State. (At one point, Keaton even crows, "You know, the Nittany Lions?")

Blowing deadlines with reckless abandon, he and a team of news types set out to do the impossible -- find the truth.

Although Hackett's desire for the truth is engrossing in itself, the real fun in this film lies in the newsroom scenes where the characters are wonderfully scripted and brought to life. But outside the office, these hothouse flowers flounder miserably, turning the film into a stale version of "Days of Our Lives."

Fortunately, the cast manages to outshine this lapse.

Glenn Close is wonderfully heartless as the social-climbing managing editor and Hackett's main antagonist. Tomei glows maternally as Hackett's pregnant newshound wife. And Randy Quaid is marvelously crusty as the cantankerous columnist, MacDougal.

And yes, Hackett does get to yell, "Stop the presses."