David Simon is best known these days as the mind behind The Wire...you know, the show about Baltimore that everybody hears is great but that nobody actually watched? It was the Arrested Development of gritty dramas. Anyhow, he used to be a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and he's written a fantastic article for the Washington Post about how thinned-down newspaper staffs can no longer push the police for information disclosures the way they once could.
Simon's not as optimistic about the future of journalism as many are, and he's got a lot to say about the tragedy of the dying newspaper. And he's right...The Baltimore Examiner published its last edition on February 15, and the Sun's parent company is in bankruptcy. Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed its doors after publishing Friday's paper. Their final front page said, simply, "Goodbye, Colorado," and was a heartfelt letter to the citizens that the paper served for nearly 150 years. I wrote a story about it on Friday, and I'll admit that I had a little lump in my throat as I typed. Like most cities, Denver is now left with one paper, The Denver Post.
Even though I have no intention or desire to be a newspaper reporter, I hope I never see the death of the newspaper. After all, without them, how will CNN do its fact-checking?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment