Fancast.com has an interview with David Simon, the creator of HBO’s “The Wire.” Simon wrote of the Baltimore Sun for 13 years. He was awarded an Edgar Award for his account of the Baltimore City Homicide Division, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (which led to the NBC series “Homcide”).
Simon is very critical of the downsizing of newspaper’s news staffs:
The newsroom where I used to work (the Baltimore Sun) had 460 people. Now it has 300. And there are people out there who just don’t care. They’ll make more money putting out a mediocre paper than they would putting out a better paper. They know this. It’s their equation. They’re quite content with mediocrity.
And within that culture we have people that are saying, ‘oh no, we’re going to do more with less,’ which is one of the great lies of the 21st century. What it means is we’re going to less with less. And that’s the nature of what journalism is becoming.
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