Two new documentaries show what it takes to make it to the top of the media industry

– To the top. At the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last week, two new documentaries aired that, while wildly different, had something in common. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything and Call Her Alex, the two-part documentary about podcaster Alex Cooper now streaming on Hulu, both showed what it took to get to the top of the male-dominated media business—in two very different eras.

Tell Me Everything traces the story of Barbara Walters, the first woman to co-anchor an evening...