McNutty is back! David Simon has more to say about journalism
A year ago, David “McNutty” Simon was being widely lionized for the concluding season of “The Wire”; only in certain remote outposts were criticisms of his rather unnuanced understanding of modern journalism heard.
But it doesn’t seem as if his reputation has aged well. Back then, Simon’s crayola scrawlings about his former profession were taken seriously; today, well, here’s a Gawker poster, Ryan Tate, tearing apart Simon’s heavily romanticized testimony on the state of the newspaper industry:
The Wire creator, David Simon, was a cops reporter a the Baltimore Sun for 12 years, ending in 1995. He then made a lucrative second career in fiction and Hollywood before detouring into a sideline as a cranky, reactionary media pundit this past year.
Simon told the Senate Commerce Committee today bloggers don’t go to city council meetings, or know what the hell is going on if they do — a clichéd, out of touch refrain common among newspapermen who can’t be bothered to do any reporting on the assertion.
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Maybe Simon does romanticize newspapers, but it seems the majority of bloggers have an ax to grind and choose their “coverage” accordingly. For all their supposed bias, newspapers generally try to present at least somewhat balanced reporting. Do you really think bloggers are an adequate substitute for professional reporters, Bill?
That part was absurd, but what Simon said about corporatization screwing up the biz long before the Internet arrived deserves a bigger place in the dialogue. Same thing happened to the record business, long before Napster.