The Wire, Season 5 -- Read Between the Lines

Everyone in this business must... must... watch The Wire: The Last Word.

It is a half-hour doc exclusively discussing journalism. Riveting stuff.

David Simon: "They say do less with more. That's bullshit. You do less with less."

 

Where does one find it?

 

If you have Comcast OnDemand it is in The Wire grouping.

 

The first thing I do when I come home from work tonight is watch that. No way in bloody fuck am I missing that.

 

I can't wait to see this season unfold.

'Just once, I'd like to know what it's like to work at a real fuckin' newspaper.'

I work at a TV station, but the sentiments are the same.

 

Just watched all of The Last Word and I'm worried based on what I saw. The story line is too pat and a little backward.

Here's what I gathered: the white reporter is a bit crooked, the Hispanic reporter is a bit naive, the line editor is the hero and the executive editor is shooting down comprehensive, societal ill stories while putting questionable crime stories on 1A.

All of that is possible on any given day but Simon is missing an opportunity to say what really is going on: Bad news judgment is like racism, it's subtle and institutionalized. You can't blame everything on an idiot editor and a rogue reporter. It's not that simple or it would easily be fixed.

At most papers, the executive editor isn't part of the front-end editing process, telling the reporter to narrow the focus. He doesn't have to. The line editor is doing that for him, consciously or not. And post-Jayson Blair, what editor is going to ignore a line editor's concerns about a story's accuracy?

It would have been more accurate to have a reporter, conflicted with unethical opportunities, battling his line editors to get good stories in. Because that's how it works. Every line editor is 100 percent certain what readers really want. That's a wall every reporter must get around.

I really don't like the idea of a rogue reporter. Just about every goddamned show or movie about reporters portrays the reporter as crooked. Sure, there are some, but give me a break. I really expected more.

 

C'mon WB. I would think after four seasons of Dostoyevskian brilliance you'd give Simon a little more credit than that. HBO's promotions department is obviously going to try and sell the series any way it can. Why don't we wait until we see how it unfolds first?

Simon was a damn good reporter who worked with some bad reporters, some great editors and some bad editors. I promise you there will be subtlety in this season.

 

Don't get me wrong, DD, I'll be hanging on every word. As I said, I'm just worried based on what I saw. It was waaaay to easy to see who the good guys and bad guys were. If he can somehow make that whitebread executive editor look human, I'll be impressed.

 

See, I took the line editor as being a part of the problem. He sits there, and bitches about the cutbacks and the industry, but at the end of the day he's feeding the beast by spiking ledes and complaining about sourcing.

 

I will say this... the Sopranos was almost always authentic... until they had any episode that hit on sports betting, where, my god, they embarrassed themselves

 

Simon, how so?

(Not being a gamber at all, I guess I missed it)

Thanks

 

Some more thoughts:

Just about every character in the wire is rounded - even the 'bad guys' have good qualities and reasons for being that way. There are few exceptions. Marlo is the main one. To me, he's not human but a representation of the cold, hard street. He's just evil.

I'm curious if Simon is still bitter to the point that will do the same with the newspaper ee/publisher/stockholder, by turning them into the grim reaper of papers.