In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police – washingtonpost.com — This essay is one of the most depressing things I have ever read. Not because I did not know this was going on, but because it confirms my worst fears. YOU HAVE TO READ IT.
Opening paragraph…
BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon
Interesting. Doesn’t Baltimore have TV & Radio news organizations?
#1 I think you missed the point. TV and radio news only skim the surface to deliver fast-paced infotainment. I once heard that it would take an entire half-hour evening news program to deliver the front page of the NYT.
I bet you’d make a lot of money leaking info to reporters. Time for me to take my civil service test
This deplorable development is another example of one of my most favorite issues: Unintended Consequences from Unsuspected Sources.
Yes, the internet strikes again. Diffusing certain aspects of society, centralizing others. Lots of good and bad consequences==none by design.
Personally, I would forgo the benefits of a robust wide open internet if it would save local newspapers, but that horse has left the barn. Lots of benefits to revoke more Bush foolishness and go back to not allowing media consolidation. It would help a little bit—maybe.
Good and bad.
# 2 Steve said, “#1 I think you missed the point. TV and radio news only skim the surface to deliver fast-paced infotainment. ”
No, I get the point. You missed a point. If that kind of reporting is needed & wanted by the citizens, someone will fill the gap.
John, what solution would you suggest to this problem? Newspapers, currently, are businesses and as such must strive to maximize profits or go out of business. Is the solution to nationalize (or at the State or local level) the newspapers? That would make them pawns of elected officials (more so than they are now).
Hey, we’ll just blog it! har har
I knew that would be a piece by David Simon (creator of The Wire and producer of Generation Kill).
That man is convinced that the fall of newspapers is the reason behind every problem in the world.
The one thing I will say. Anytime I have read an article written by a newspaper ‘expert’ on something I know well, it has been only ‘kinda’ right, but pretty off in key areas.
I have listened to any number of TV/radio news casts in different cities around the country, including Baltimore. After the weather check, sports update, road conditions, another weather check, they spend 20 seconds repeating the headlines of their “partner” newspaper. But if you want a feel good story on a teenager pushing a No Cussing Week, the local TV/radio media will be all over it.
you would think the news papers might learn when you make a product no one wants no one buys it.
News papers in general are the strongest bastion of liberalism in this country :see Ap doctored photos and fake stories, almost all Americans given a choice reject liberal bias in the media but instead of going back to simply reporting the news unbiasedly most papers went further left :see NY Times/ La Times and are now going broke
I say good riddance to garbage, bad management and another liberal failure on their long list of failures
I don’t think his comparison is totally fair. Internet media is just a fraction of the age of newspaper journalism. When the newspapers started out, there weren’t so many intrepid reporters doing muckraking and uncovering the ills of the world… Web journalism deserves a chance to prove itself. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t, but time will tell.
I think that the article is a thoughtful piece by a dedicated reporter who sees the world he knew crumble away. The internet has created legions and legions of citizen reporters, but we lack a few things.
1) The backing of a big organization like the “Sun” or the “PI” or the “Times” which makes people stop to actually look up and get information to you.
2) we don’t have the time/resources to go looking for the story. Sure if we get beat up by the cops or have a news story directly impact us, we are able to put up the story and hopefully others will link and hear about it. But In this case of the 61 y/o domestic violence suspect/polices shooting victim, I doubt that he knew many people who were going to get up in arms about the incident and get it out and about.
The newspapers, and press in general haven’t always been bastions of truth and upholders of justice. Around the time of Watergate the press elevated itself to that post. The press championed Joe McCarthy (for a while) and J. Edgar Hoover until after his retirement. At the local level the police beat reporters and desk sargents were more often than not freinds (citation needed).
It is the internet with access to cell phone videos and large numbers of eyeballs (like in the Oscar Grant case in Oakland) that will resurrect truth and justice.
blow hard laid off newspaper “reporter” full of BS…..if you did your JOB Baltimore wouldn’t be the corrupt city it is….
#14, don’t worry, he made a whole show to tell us all the solutions, like spending oodles of money on at-risk kids in school to teach them very little, because hey it’s an improvement over what came before(and of course, 3 out of 4 black boys are drug dealers).
#14 You are totally ignorant.
Watch “The Wire”. Simon isn’t a down on his luck complainer. The show explores the interaction of a city’s institutions with seriousness and fairness.
The problem with the internet, as opposed to newspapers, is the filtering. Newspapers are clinging to a business model that no longer works, but that is not due to a history of lackluster reporting.
The Baltimore Sun is, historically, one of the premiere small city papers. Industry consolidation and unwillingness to move away from physical editions is slowly killing papers across the country.
When something great drifts into irrelevance it is sad, especially when there is nothing to take its place.
Blogs are a great niche thing, but readership is widely dispersed. I find it hard to imagine a local interest blog generating enough readership to give the blog authors power to demand answers from local officials.
The Baltimore City Paper is probably the best in town. The Sun is rather establishment and the local stations have been in rough shape for a while. Then there’s Sinclair broadcasting, who are pretty much police cheerleaders.
#16 I watched it, and as one person commented, his solutions and overall message fail when compared to Rudy Giuliani’s actions in New York.
I think the internet is taking another one of its unwarranted moments of self-importance. The internet didn’t destroy the newspaper, 9/11 did. 9/11 was the moment at which people became forever attached to their cable news network of choice. Local news seemed no longer consequential, and lacked the wider scope and budget which CNN and Fox News had at their disposal to cover the stories which mattered, namely the War on Terror and the buildup to Iraq. Local news began to look cheap and watered down, and if you were one of the many people adopting to satellite at that time the local analog channels weren’t yet available. Newspapers, covering local robberies and shootings, seemed to matter less and focused too much on the grim and grotesque. Even today, what’s going on in your community that’s as massive and entertaining as financial disasters and hurricanes and national elections? Local news is what died, and it brought newspapers with it.
itz teh dumbification of amurika…