BALTIMORE " 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 begins 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.0
Foreign bureaus close. Veteran reporters who know their terrain are cast aside. And into the void steps journalism's boogeyman: 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.
Said Nina K. Noble, an executive producer of "The Wire": "I don't think David is pointing any finger at The Baltimore Sun in particular. I think he's frustrated with the state of media outlets around the country."
Still, Sun staffers won't have much trouble finding versions of themselves in "The Wire's" newsroom, which was recreated on a soundstage because shooting in the real newsroom proved too expensive and logistically difficult. While no current reporters appear on the show, several former ones do, and some plot threads appear to be drawn from Simon's experiences.0
"I think people in the newsroom understand that there's a personal angle in this upcoming season for David," Franklin said.
That's putting it mildly. Simon has had a tempestuous relationship with his former employer that, by many accounts, persists to this day.
He has savaged former Sun editor William K. Marimow on several occasions. Franklin says Simon took him out to lunch when he succeeded Marimow in 2004 and was "very frank" about where he thought The Sun could improve. And he's known for firing off long, profane missives when the newspaper publishes something that upsets him.
"David just goes crazy over things you wouldn't think he'd take offense at," said Jean Marbella, a metro columnist who's been with The Sun for 20 years. "No one will ever show you these letters, but they end up being legendary."
Some in the newsroom are amazed that Simon remains peeved over things that happened under Marimow and his predecessor, John Carroll, both of whom came to The Sun from The Philadelphia Inquirer in the early 1990s. Simon told The New Yorker that Carroll and Marimow "were tone-deaf and prize-hungry and more interested in self-aggrandizement than in building lasting quality at the paper."
While Simon is not doing interviews to promote "The Wire" because of the Hollywood writers' strike, he told The Associated Press by phone Thursday that his low regard for Carroll and Marimow stems from his contention that they did not take seriously his concerns that a reporter for The Sun was inventing material.
"It's about journalistic fraud and their unwillingness to deal with it," Simon said.
In response, Carroll said the reporter in question was disciplined after a story that resulted in a retraction, and that the reporter caused no further problems.
"I happen to think that the mistakes that occurred in the paper when I was there were fewer and less serious than the mistakes made in most of the best papers in the country," Carroll said. "But we certainly made our share."
Simon's revenge against Marimow has taken many forms " including the introduction of a loathsome police supervisor named Marimow in the show's fourth season.
Marimow, who succeeded Carroll as The Sun's editor before being fired in 2004, is now back at The Inquirer as editor. He said he was amused by the character named for him but wasn't so pleased when he heard a tape of Simon profanely denigrating him.
"In demeaning the work that John and I did, in my opinion, David demeans himself, not us," Marimow said. "I think that when someone harbors a grudge for so many years, it begins to poison the person who harbors the grudge."
Marimow points to two lengthy articles written in journalism reviews in the late 1990s that praised him and Carroll for revitalizing the paper.
"When you assess David Simon's portrayal of The Sun and his assertion that John Carroll and I ruined the newspaper, you don't have to take his word for it and you don't have to take my word for it," Marimow said.
The Sun's television critic, David Zurawik, believes Simon's obsession with what went on at the paper more than a decade ago has hurt his storytelling. Zurawik, who like many critics has championed "The Wire" as a brilliant, landmark series, argued in his fifth-season review that the newsroom scenes lacked the insight and topicality of the story lines about police, politicians and schools.
"Simon left The Sun in 1995, and his newsroom villains are patterned on editors and a reporter long gone from Baltimore," Zurawik wrote. "But Simon presents his story as if it is taking place at The Sun today."
Zurawik also faults Simon for writing the newspaper story line "like a morality play," with obvious heroes and villains " something "The Wire" has scrupulously avoided in the past.
Simon posted a measured response to Zurawik's review on Romenesko, a media news Web site, thanking him for voicing his honest opinion. He also thanked The Sun for allowing the show to use its name to explore the difficulties confronting newspaper journalism.
"Tim Franklin is right: The people on the ground in Baltimore, though there are less of them, are doing the most to produce the best newspaper they can," Simon wrote. "He and his staff have nothing of which to be ashamed, nor was it our intent to in any way shame them."
That may come as a relief to Sun staffers, but there's still plenty of anticipation in the newsroom about the paper being featured on a series watched by millions " a show that has done little to counter the perception of a dysfunctional Baltimore characterized by violence, drugs and poverty.
"A lot of us are fans of the show and watch it pretty closely," said John Fritze, The Sun's City Hall reporter. "We're all waiting to see how it's portrayed."
Are people nervous?
"I'm not sure nervous is the right way to put it," Fritze said. "Maybe intrigued."
Franklin said newsroom employees were much more concerned about the impact of billionaire Sam Zell's takeover of the newspaper's parent, Tribune Co., than they were worried about how they'd be portrayed on a TV show.
Perhaps they're following the lead of Mayor Sheila Dixon, who has her own doppelganger on "The Wire" " a female City Council president who's too cozy with developers. Dixon said in an interview that she watched the fourth season with great interest because of its insight into why schools fail. But she's more skeptical about Simon's take on city politics.
"I was asked in the gym, when I was City Council president, is this how I behaved? And I said, 'No, this is not how I behave,"' Dixon said. "They want to get good ratings. Are there elements of certain political things that happen? Sure. But the style that they portray it? No."
For one thing, Dixon said: "I'm not a curser."