New at Reason

Jesse Walker, a proud Baltimore County resident, offers his take on the controversial wrap-up of The Wire.

Comments

The Skipper | March 11, 2008, 4:35pm | #

'Gilligan's' Mary Ann caught with dope

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080311/ap_on_en_tv/people_dawn_wells_3

TB | March 11, 2008, 5:01pm | #

As a former non-Sun Trib Co. employee, I agree with Jesse in full. Who needs the Baltimore (or Hartford!) perspective from Paris, when you already have umpteen reporters from other papers' (LA, Chi, LI) bureaus. By the same token, you need to use those savings to get MORE local.

The Wire illustrates this by having an entire bloody gang war go unremarked (especially Omar's death), because no one was watching and no one knew the players.

Overall, the show is a great piece of drama and a thoroughly libertarian critique of the power of institutions and power.

TB | March 11, 2008, 5:03pm | #

make that last line:

thoroughly libertarian critique of institutions and power.

x,y | March 11, 2008, 5:10pm | #

Most of The Wire critcisms I've read this year are bunk and result directly from the fact that the show took on the Sun. "But that's not what a newspaper is really like!" they howl. See Slate's coverage of the last season for an excellent example of this. To this I say:

1. It's fiction (based in large part on real facts, but fiction nonetheless).

2. Get a grip. You're not that important and we (most watchers who don't write for a living) could care less about how real or fake the newsroom scenes are.

stephen the goldberger | March 11, 2008, 5:23pm | #

As a wire fanatic I say the last season was by far the most disapointing, and it has almost entirely to do with its focus on the Sun.

I care about journalistic integrity, but couldnt you have done a better job showing its downfall than the tired Jayson Blair/Stephen Glass story. Shattered Glass showed the same storyline, infinitely better. A lot of the scenes seemed overly sanctimonious.

Simon should have taken a step back, and said ok. What do newspaper readers REALLY care about when it comes to understanding the media and how it operates?

Also the whole expose of the shallowness of the modern mass media is old tired ground. I understand. Ok?

edna | March 11, 2008, 5:29pm | #

i fondly remember the days when the sun was a world-class paper- papers, really, the morning and evening editions were totally different.

now, it's faceless and stunningly bland.

zig zag man | March 11, 2008, 6:08pm | #

"'Gilligan's' Mary Ann caught with dope.

This is the best reason ever to stop the war on some drugs, even Mary Ann smokes pot.

/Mary Ann over Ginger

//I blame Bob Denver's ghost.

Jose Ortega y Gasset | March 11, 2008, 6:09pm | #

I have worked with Sun reporters for years, disclosing my bias.

The Sun generally sucks. Middle management is bloated. There are far too many editors; far too few reporters. The paper is all too prone to pissing contests, presumably to maintain some semblence of relevance. Pulling the metro area/regional desks like the adjoining counties was sheer stupidity and precipated a drop in circulation. In an era where print journalism is struggling, the Sun is like an hefty Baltimore "hon" thrashing about wildly in a local quarry, eventually leaving nothing but a multi-colored oil slick of cheap makeup on the water's surface.

Eric D. Dixon | March 11, 2008, 6:10pm | #

What little of Slate's criticism of "The Wire" I actually read seemed pretty misguided to me -- one comment in particular. They thought it wasn't realistic that Gus would use such a cliched phrase as "if it bleeds, it leads," but that's *exactly* the type of thing an old-school editor might say sarcastically, with wearied resignation -- the way Gus said it on the show.

Anyway, lest I end up picking nits off a nit, all I really have to say is that the fictional Sun newsroom felt like a realistic newsroom to me, based on the couple I've worked in...

Paul | March 11, 2008, 6:34pm | #

There are more outlets to choose from, more ways to start an outlet of your own, more eyes monitoring the outlets' output for errors, omissions, and lies.

And that, right there, is the core complaint with many of the media elite. They don't feel elite like they used to. Too many people in pajamas critiquing their work. And we can't have that, now, can we?

LarryA | March 12, 2008, 3:11pm | #

(Disclaimer: What follows are my own opinions. They are not necessarily shared by anyone who happens to be married to me.)

I feel for you, Jesse. I have the same situation.

But that makes it all the more important that a paper respond to that competition by doing the things an urban newspaper is best suited to do. And that means intimate, collaborative coverage of a city by people who know it well.

Bingo. Here where I live the major complaint of the almost-daily newspaper is not enough local news. Most of what it prints comes off the AP wire. About a year ago I was in their office for something and overheard their family editor on the phone getting directions from someone having an event. The editor was asking how to get to the premier country club in the newspaper’s coverage area. That story’s still echoing around the higher social circles.

The response is a new weekly that covers all the local stories. Actually, it’s a paper with one reporter (my wife) who writes almost everything that goes in it except sports. City council, several school boards, county commissioners, features, founding family histories for our sesquicentennial, society events, arts and culture, everything. We’ve lived in Kerrville for 25 years now, so she knows what’s going on.

The weekly is going on two years old. It went in the black less than nine months after startup. Subscriptions are growing steadily enough that they’re planning another increase in the print run in a couple of months.

The larger mediasphere has grown more open to outside voices

In more ways than anyone realizes. Ten or fifteen years ago a major feature of a local paper (or local issue of a newspaper) was the TV guide. Lots of people listed it as a major reason, and in some case the only reason they subscribed. Now all the cable/dish systems have on-line directories and newspaper guides are nearly out of business. Same with stock market reports and weather.

"But that's not what a newspaper is really like!" they howl.

You’d think that reporters, seeing how realistically TV and the movies treat newspapers, might be a little skeptical about how the silver screen covers car chases and gun battles. But no.

Russ 2000 | March 12, 2008, 4:09pm | #

LarryA, classifieds are down to near zero, too.

Jesse, you're absolutely right about closing off that third avenue. Thing is, even when the paper DOES does hire a local writer, the papers seems to hate neighborhood angles in favor of a more metropolitan zeitgeist.

The one that came to mind as soon as I read this piece was Richard Roeper. He's been a columnist rather than a reporter, but his first few years of columns were completely local. He doesn't have the way with words that a Mike Royko had, but his columns read like a native from a neighborhood. (Having gone to the same parish and high school as he, I probably had more appreciation than most.) But then the newspaper encouraged its people to get on TV and radio as a promotional vehicle - and electronic news HATES covering neighborhoods. So his columns slowly turned more and more into the political gossip and boring pop culture criticism that they are today. Newspapers are making a conscious effort to be a print version of TV which to me makes no sense.