Why David Simon matters by jonathan dudley (buckingham)

WHY Newspapers and David Simon matter. I don't know if you have notice this lately but newspapers are in the shithouse. The once mighty informer of news and opinions have fallen on hard times. I was born in a time in which my parents passed the paper around before they woke my brother and me during the week. Same thing on the weekends too but with a bit more time to scan the articles, opinions and even the ads.

This was a time when reporters and the newspapers reallyreallyreally mattered. I was born in 76'. Right after Woodward and Bernstein chased the hell out a story that included a break-in at the Democratic Headquarters in the now famous Watergate building that sits on the Potomac.

Through the late 80's and even part of the 90's, newspapers allowed the journalist time to cover an issue and report to the masses have taken many hits. Sure, Network news @ 6:30 pm eastern is not terrible, but is basically boiled down to the "big" news of the day followed by incomplete stories on how Americans are getting fleeced by some government program, nefarious or not. YES, you little jackass from Louisiana, we do need to pay for Volcano monitoring. Many of these Nightly News stories do a great job at telling the viewer 1 side of the story but certainly not the big picture. This maybe a time consideration/issue but that certainly does not get them off the hook.

In addition, the network news and the better internet news sites (huffingtonpost.com in particular) won't cover my city hall meeting not even if I lived in Nu Yawk. So called citizen journalists surely won't be down at my city hall covering the tough debates and the local TV news won't be there unless there is something salacious to cover. "COUNCILWOMAN STRIPS OFF BLOUSE TO MAKE POINT ON HOUSING ASSESSMENTS...NEWS AT 11."
Our society is unfortunately in decline in many areas including the news but this shit pile is not limited to news sources.

Television in general is in a similar state as well. There a hell of lot of programs that fit everything into the allotted 40 minutes (for most TV dramas) and the bad guy gets arrested, the troubled teen is saved and most major issues become resolved in the 39th minute (don't forget the commercials). HBO, the alternative to bad mainstream network television and its pay cable and basic cable counterparts, see FX, AMC, Showtime and USA take quite a different approach to storytelling. Where the main story line takes place over several episodes even several seasons.
Examples you say, how bout' USA's Monk and Burn Notice, HBO's whole lineup, Showtimes Dexter and many others, AMC's Mad Men and my AMC favorite Breaking Bad and FX's Rescue Me.
Of course I don't believe that TV is completely dead just in decline. When the EMMY's miss The Wire for 5 straight seasons with the exception of the occasional writing nomination in favor of such shows as Boston Legal, you must ask yourself the question, WHY? WHY? WHY?

David Simon is America's curmudgeon. Unfortunately, as smart as he is and as much as people would be wise to listen to him, Americans and people in general don't really like the truth especially if it involves any amount of doom and gloom. The doom and gloom usually has to break their fear-o-meter for them to pay attention.

Sure, people love television when its bang bang, sex sex and (false) reality reality, but they tend not to tune in when its actual "reality" or based on "reality". However, as small of an audience as The Wire did get is actually growing. In England, the terrestrial TV channel, BBC2, is now showing back to back episodes in order Monday thru Friday. This is extraordinary. In addition, people have been passing around the DVD sets from each season spreading the show like wild fire...ok, more like somewhat "wild" fire.

Each season The Wire took a look a different aspect of the city of Baltimore. In season 1, what began as a cop/drug dealers show or at least in the minds of the execs to the great HBO and I actually mean that. HBO does for TV and TV writers what the printing press did for novelists. An unhindered (mostly unhindered) means to getting words, thoughts, ideas and characters out to the masses. A book costs you $10 t0 $25 bucks a pop and similarly, HBO costs roughly the same per month.

After Season 1, which was as much about bureaucracy as it was about cops and drug dealers, The Port of Baltimore was the main new location and the death of work was the theme. Consequently, each following season kept changing its main focus but the theme was the same.

In The Wire's final season, the lens focused its attention on local & regional journalism or the lack thereof. Unfortunately, as I've have seen firsthand and my friend EJ has seen up close as well, journalism, especially the journalism that comes from newspapers is on a serious decline unfortunately. Why is it unfortunate? Turn on the bullshit 10 0'clock news and the slightly less bullshit 11 O'clock news and look for local news that is in depth and does not pertain to a murder or something shocking. Shock value rules. I'm not saying murders are not important to cover but there is no attempt to put that coverage in any context whatsoever.
MORE TO COME




March 9, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — David Simon -- called the "creator of some of television's most critically acclaimed and relevant work" by Associated Press -- is coming to DePauw University. On Thursday, April 2, Simon will deliver the keynote address for DePauw's Undergraduate Communications Honors Conference. Titled "The Audacity of Despair: The Decline of American Empire and What's In It For You," the talk begins at 8 p.m. in the ballroom of the Memorial Student Union Building and is free and open to students and the public.

Simon is the force behind such acclaimed series as The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street and Generation Kill. This week he and HBO are "set to begin production this week on the pilot for Treme, a drama set three months after Katrina ravaged New Orleans," notes AP.

"The overall thing has to feel like the truth about post-Katrina New Orleans," Simon says of his new project. "Not just to people down here, but to a lot of people who may have been paying attention elsewhere."

After graduating from the University of Maryland at College Park, Simon served as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. In 1991, while still with the newspaper, he authored Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which won the won the 1992 Edgar Award for "best fact crime book." It was the basis for the award-winning TV series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999), on which Simon worked as a writer and producer after he left his newspaper job.

In 1997 he co-authored, with Ed Burns, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the true account of a West Baltimore community dominated by a heavy drug market. It was named a "notable book of the year" by the New York Times and became a six-hour HBO miniseries which Simon co-wrote and produced. It won three Emmy Awards.

Simon then served as creator, show runner, executive producer and head writer of the HBO drama series The Wire, which aired its final episode one year ago today after 5 seasons. The critically-acclaimed series, which focuses on the role of mass media in society, was honored last month with the Writers Guild of America Award award for Best Dramatic Series.

He also Simon produced and wrote Generation Kill, a miniseries which also aired on HBO and was a collaboration with Ed Burns.

The Atlantic's Mark Bowden wrote,"As The Wire unveiled its fourth season in 2006, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, in a much-cited column, called it 'the best TV show ever broadcast in America.' The New York Times, in an editorial (not a review, mind you) called the show Dickensian. I agree with both assessments. 'Wire-world,' as Simon calls it, does for turn-of-the- millennium Baltimore what Dickens's Bleak House does for mid-19th-century London. Dickens takes the byzantine bureaucracy of the law and the petty corruptions of the legal profession, borrows from the neighborhoods, manners, dress, and language of the Chancery courts and the Holborn district, and builds from them a world that breathes. Similarly, The Wire creates a vision of official Baltimore as a heavy, self-justified bureaucracy, gripped by its own byzantine logic and criminally unconcerned about the lives of ordinary people, who enter it at their own risk."

In a 2004 Reason interview, Simon noted, "The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage. I think if you look at what journalism has achieved in terms of parsing the events that got us into this war in Iraq, or the truth about what happened in the election -- I've become increasingly cynical about the ability of daily journalism to effect any kind of meaningful change. I was pretty dubious about it when I was a journalist, but now I think it's remarkably ineffectual."

David Simon continues to work as a freelance journalist and author, writing for publications as varied as the Washington Post, the New Republic and Details magazine.