David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire -- far and away, the best thing on television -- has lived the fantasy of a lot of reporters by naming one of his less enviable characters for a former newspaper colleague he doesn't much like.
Here's how Margaret Talbot described the situation in an October profile of Simon in the New Yorker:
Evidence of Simon’s feuds often ends up on “The Wire.” In the fourth season, Simon introduced a highly unpleasant supervisor of the major-crimes unit—someone who is more than willing to close down any investigations that might embarrass politicians, and of whom a sergeant says, “He doesn’t cast off talent lightly. He heaves it away with great force.” His name is Marimow.
The real William Marimow, who is now the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, says that he’s baffled and dismayed by Simon’s “obsession” with what went on at the [Baltimore] Sun: “He is as monomaniacal as Captain Ahab pursuing the white whale.” Marimow says that the Sun made great strides in narrative and in-depth journalism—and was acknowledged for doing so in the Columbia Journalism Review and other publications—during the same years that Simon “claims we were destroying it.” He recalls only two conflicts with Simon: one over a raise that Simon wanted, and one over an article that Simon wrote about “metalmen”—people who strip houses of copper piping and sell it. Marimow didn’t like Simon’s use of the word “harvesters” to describe “people who were destroying homes. I thought it glorified them. He disagreed.” Now, Marimow says, “it’s this drumbeat, year after year, of rewriting history.”
With the final season of The Wire set to begin Sunday, this conflict, as well as the new focus on the downsizing of newspapers, has become something of a cause celebre in media circles, getting a fair bit of attention on the industry Web site Romenesko. For example, from the Los Angeles Times:
For many Sun staffers, the anticipation of seeing their paper depicted in "The Wire" is mixed with leeriness about the prospect that it has been colored by Simon's bitterness.
"David left here upset at the way people who were then editors treated him and has made no bones about it," said outgoing associate Editorial Page Editor William Englund, whose wife, Kathy Lally, is one of 10 former Sun employees who appear in cameos this season. "It's not going to be a love letter to the paper, that's for sure."
Simon said as much in a talk he gave in April as part of a Baltimore storytelling series, in which he said he watched Carroll and Marimow "single-handedly destroy the Sun." He described how he named an obnoxious police lieutenant "Marimow" in "The Wire" last season as "a little kick in the ass" and called the series' final focus on media "my fantasy for revenge," indicating that he modeled the top editors in the show after the two men.
Simon now dismisses those remarks as "hyperbole."
"I wouldn't waste 10 hours of HBO programming to settle a particular score with anyone," he said via phone from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was working on his next HBO project, "Generation Kill," a miniseries about a group of Marines in the 2003 Iraq invasion. (He declined to do publicity for "The Wire" because of the writers strike but agreed to speak about his portrayal of the Sun.)
"The story line reflects the problems that I saw inherent in journalism, and those problems have to do with more than the Baltimore Sun and more than those particular editors," he added.
Still, Simon acknowledged that his frustration with [John] Carroll and Marimow was "one aspect" that inspired the story line, saying: "Every now and then we take a potshot. I'd like to think they're deserved."
I'll just give props to Simon for creating something incredible -- universally described as "novelistic," with remarkably detailed characters and plot lines -- on the small screen.
The Sun's own critic was unimpressed with the new season. Writing in the Phoenix, David Bianculli, however, gives it the thumbs-up:
If you’ve been a Wire fan since the beginning in 2002, you’ll be stunned from the start, just to learn what has happened to some of the characters in the year or so (in their world as well as ours) since we’ve seen them. Some former addicts are straight, while some former teetotalers aren’t. Marlo’s cold-blooded killers, including Felicia “Snoop” Pearson as a particularly ruthless hit woman, are still at large. The mayor tries to avoid being eaten alive by the barracudas surrounding him — and so, on the illegal side of the fence, does drug lord Proposition Joe.
Simon, a former police reporter for the Sun, knows this stuff cold, and it shows. This season of The Wire presents the best, most true-to-life depiction of newsroom journalism and politics since the movie version of All the President’s Men. And though I can’t wait to see the conclusion of this final season, The Wire once again is off to a thrilling start.
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