The problem Bill Marimow had with David Simon is that David wanted his reputation to be bigger than, and more importantly independent of, the Sun's reputation. The Gene Roberts/Inquirer way was more team-driven and self-abnegating than that. What Bill did to Stephen A is what he did to Simon and many others. If you wanted to be a thought leader independent of "channels,'' you were done. The formula was to be hired by Bill, to take your ideas from Bill and John, and be grateful.
David gets lots wrong about The Sun and about Baltimore and about the drug war. No one who moved to New York from Baltimore in the 1990s, as I did, can be as pessimistic about the effects of simple, effective law enforcement as Simon is. (And the benefits of medicalization, which he championed beginning with The Corner, are non-existent). No one who knows Maryland's economy thinks that, net/net, the move to a service based economy has been bad for the Baltimore metro area. Bad for specific Baltimore neighborhoods, yes. But statewide, Maryland moved up seven spots in national personal-income ratings from the 1970s to the 1990s. Despite season 2 of Th Wire, and some of David's sillier bleatings about the evils of capitalism itself, the declining relative importance of the manufacturing economy was terrific for Maryland. (This would apply equally to Jim Haner's ridiculous series arguing that conflcts of interest in the city building department, rather than broad economic and cultural trends, drove the decline of Baltimore neighborhoods). And I'd give you a different take on the decline of newspapers than this season has, and certainly with different solutions.
That said, he has a lot right too. I got the same civility lecture from Bill M that I saw on the screen two weeks ago. I heard the same "I had lunch with Gene Roberts" talk more than once. And yet, among the things I've never forgiven Bill Marimow and John Carroll for is casually libeling Simon in the Brill's content article, where they (through Jim Asher, the former city editor) called him mentally ill. For emphasis, they then teamed up on Laura Lippman, now Simon's wife. To call it classless is to demean people who eat with their mouths full and jack off at the table. Disagreeing disagreeably wasn't in their skill set. And it pretty much made clear who they were.
Last I heard Jim Haner was at the Bergen Record. The sports, business and features people who left are all at places you know. Simon, who has no Pulitzers, contents himself with an Emmy and a Peabody. Lippman is a best-selling novelist.
And The Sun won exactly the same number of Pulitzers in the 13-year Carroll and Marimow era as in the preceding 13 years -- three. They were finalists many more times. But in many of those cases there was something not quite right, not quite original (a Honduras series that was inspired by a wire service story about a government investigation into old atrocities, which duplicated its conclusions, comes to mind) not quite good enough about them. They weren't organic -- they didn't spring from doing the job right every day but from a self-conscious search for prize winning ideas, even if, as in the Honduras example, the news had been known for more than a decade and had happened 3,000 miles away).
They were fine stories -- Honduras was a Pulitzer finalist -- but their self-consciousness doomed them. Everyone ultimately knew what they were and how hollow they were, as finely crafted as they were. Two of the Pulitzers they did win came, instead, from simple excellence in things good papers do every day - Diana Sugg's amazing stories about children with cancer, and Lisa Pollak's profile of the umpire Oriole star Robby Alomar spit on. Those stories didn't have committees, they didn't take 18 months (and ask for you, the reader to be impressed by how long they took) and didn't spur congressional hearings. They just covered the hell out of a good news town.
One last thing. As many people from The Carroll era Sun won Pulitzers after leaving as they did at it. Steve Hunter and Scott Higham have won at the Post, Ian JOhnson won at the WSJ. I'm sure there are others if I think about it.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillygossip/Inqwaster_fires_Stephen_...
The problem Bill Marimow had with David Simon is that David wanted his reputation to be bigger than, and more importantly independent of, the Sun's reputation. The Gene Roberts/Inquirer way was more team-driven and self-abnegating than that. What Bill did to Stephen A is what he did to Simon and many others. If you wanted to be a thought leader independent of "channels,'' you were done. The formula was to be hired by Bill, to take your ideas from Bill and John, and be grateful.
David gets lots wrong about The Sun and about Baltimore and about the drug war. No one who moved to New York from Baltimore in the 1990s, as I did, can be as pessimistic about the effects of simple, effective law enforcement as Simon is. (And the benefits of medicalization, which he championed beginning with The Corner, are non-existent). No one who knows Maryland's economy thinks that, net/net, the move to a service based economy has been bad for the Baltimore metro area. Bad for specific Baltimore neighborhoods, yes. But statewide, Maryland moved up seven spots in national personal-income ratings from the 1970s to the 1990s. Despite season 2 of Th Wire, and some of David's sillier bleatings about the evils of capitalism itself, the declining relative importance of the manufacturing economy was terrific for Maryland. (This would apply equally to Jim Haner's ridiculous series arguing that conflcts of interest in the city building department, rather than broad economic and cultural trends, drove the decline of Baltimore neighborhoods). And I'd give you a different take on the decline of newspapers than this season has, and certainly with different solutions.
That said, he has a lot right too. I got the same civility lecture from Bill M that I saw on the screen two weeks ago. I heard the same "I had lunch with Gene Roberts" talk more than once. And yet, among the things I've never forgiven Bill Marimow and John Carroll for is casually libeling Simon in the Brill's content article, where they (through Jim Asher, the former city editor) called him mentally ill. For emphasis, they then teamed up on Laura Lippman, now Simon's wife. To call it classless is to demean people who eat with their mouths full and jack off at the table. Disagreeing disagreeably wasn't in their skill set. And it pretty much made clear who they were.
Last I heard Jim Haner was at the Bergen Record. The sports, business and features people who left are all at places you know. Simon, who has no Pulitzers, contents himself with an Emmy and a Peabody. Lippman is a best-selling novelist.
And The Sun won exactly the same number of Pulitzers in the 13-year Carroll and Marimow era as in the preceding 13 years -- three. They were finalists many more times. But in many of those cases there was something not quite right, not quite original (a Honduras series that was inspired by a wire service story about a government investigation into old atrocities, which duplicated its conclusions, comes to mind) not quite good enough about them. They weren't organic -- they didn't spring from doing the job right every day but from a self-conscious search for prize winning ideas, even if, as in the Honduras example, the news had been known for more than a decade and had happened 3,000 miles away).
They were fine stories -- Honduras was a Pulitzer finalist -- but their self-consciousness doomed them. Everyone ultimately knew what they were and how hollow they were, as finely crafted as they were. Two of the Pulitzers they did win came, instead, from simple excellence in things good papers do every day - Diana Sugg's amazing stories about children with cancer, and Lisa Pollak's profile of the umpire Oriole star Robby Alomar spit on. Those stories didn't have committees, they didn't take 18 months (and ask for you, the reader to be impressed by how long they took) and didn't spur congressional hearings. They just covered the hell out of a good news town.
One last thing. As many people from The Carroll era Sun won Pulitzers after leaving as they did at it. Steve Hunter and Scott Higham have won at the Post, Ian JOhnson won at the WSJ. I'm sure there are others if I think about it.