By: In four previous seasons, ??The Wire?? chronicled this city?s failing or corrupt institutions ? the police department, labor unions, City Hall, public schools ? that swallowed even the pure souls within them.
Executive producer and lead writer David Simon?s latest target is arguably his most personal. For its fifth and final season, which began Jan. 6, ??The Wire?? ventures into the newsroom of The Sun, Baltimore?s newspaper of record, where Simon worked for 13 years as a police reporter before he took a buyout in 1995.
Unsurprisingly, Simon isn?t pleased with what?s happened since then. ??The Wire?? shows The Sun struggling to maintain its relevance amid profit-hungry corporate owners, obtuse editors and a drastically reduced reporting staff.
Foreign bureaus close. Veteran reporters who know their terrain are cast aside. And into the void steps journalism?s bogeyman: an ambitious reporter (played to weaselly perfection by Tom McCarthy) who lacks talent or scruples and refuses to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Current Sun reporters and editors don?t dispute that recent buyouts and budget cuts have hurt the paper. But they don?t believe The Sun is any more vulnerable to a Jayson Blair-like fabulist as a result.
The show ??no more depicts the real-life newsroom of The Baltimore Sun than ?Law & Order? depicts the real-life criminal justice system of New York,?? said Timothy A. Franklin, The Sun?s editor.
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