This week’s Bill Moyers podcast (a frequent listen of mine…) interviewed David Simon, creator of “The Wire.” It was a fascinating conversation that I think is well worth the listen…
The lead-in:
“The executive producer of HBO’s critically-acclaimed show THE WIRE, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today. After a dozen years covering crime for the BALTIMORE SUN, David Simon left journalism to write books and tell stories for NBC and HBO, including his Peabody-winning cop show THE WIRE, which looked at the drug wars and the gritty underbelly of the inner-city.”
One of the topics touched on in the discussion is the future(?) of journalism… It is something that crosses my mind often as I think about where I want to head in my career. In my opinion, as a visual “storyteller,” there are two roads: TV/Film and Journalism. I can honestly say that, for the life of me, I can’t tell you which one sounds more appealing. Depends on the day. Even now, I am in the process of applying for J-school at Northwestern. I have visited the campus, really dig the restructuring of the program to attempt to keep ahead of the digital curve, and get really excited about the process of the work. But honestly, is it a good idea? Will there be journalism jobs in the future? Sure, some, but you would be hard pressed to find people who could tell you what the models are going to look like. Everyone agrees there is a seismic (if not catastrophic) restructuring of the industry taking place. I thought that Simon had some interesting thoughts as someone who has lived in both worlds:
(from the PBS/Moyers site)
“Stephen Colbert was both amusing and frightening, as usual, when he recently pondered on air: “The impending death of the newspaper industry: Where will they print the obituary?”
It’s not just dailies or weeklies in small towns that are disappearing in droves but big city stalwarts like THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER and THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS. Even those papers still running presses are cutting staff, slashing sections and filing for bankruptcy or threatening closure. Bets are in over whether THE BOSTON GLOBE or THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE will be the next to go.
You can easily keep track of developments online. TPM.com updates its “Extra! The Death Of The Newspaper In Pictures” feature every time another paper announces closure or downsizing. And, for more instantaneous gratification there is new Twitter feed Media is Dying. Of course, that feed also tracks downsizing magazines, radio and broadcast news media too.
Many analysts blame the rise of new media for the downfall of the old. But former beat reporter David Simon is not one of them. He points to the business model of newspapers before the Internet generation stated demanding news for free:
“I would buy that if I wasn’t in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Internet. Because I took the third buyout from the BALTIMORE SUN. I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left, in 1995. Long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time those buyouts happened when the BALTIMORE SUN was earning 37 percent profits [….] All that R&D money that was supposed to go into make newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world. It went to shareholders in the Tribune Company or the L.A. Times-Mirror company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.”
But Simon isn’t sanguine about the loss of the what the daily newspaper can be at its best, as he recently remarked to the UK’s GUARDIAN: “Oh, to be a state or local official in America without newspapers. It’s got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption.”
Anyways, I really do think that it is a great listen…I have posted the podcast here, but if you prefer, you can listen to it on the pbs site
(PLUS, if you are a stuffwhitepeoplelike.com kind of person, it will fulfill several cool requirements…)
(13 plays)