Senate Hearing on Future of Newspapers Features Compelling Testimony by "The Wire" Creator David Simon

Former Baltimore Sun reporter and "The Wire" creator David Simon testifies at the Senate hearing.

So the Senate held a hearing recently on the future of newspapers, which these days is about as oxymoronic a subject heading as you’re likely to find. There was the predictable new media/old media split between Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post proclaiming the virtues of the brave new world of online journalism, and James Moroney, publisher of the beleaguered (what paper isn’t?) Dallas Morning News, bemoaning the current state of affairs.

But the most alarming and yet ultimately inspiring testimony came from David Simon, an ex-Baltimore newspaperman who drew upon his experiences as an ink-stained city reporter to produce the acclaimed series “The Wire.”

With barely concealed anger, Simon told the senators that journalism of the kind done by trained professionals is dying, “and unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else.

“The internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future,” he added. “But thus far, it does not deliver much first-generation reporting.”

Instead, he said, “it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from aggregators and abandon its point of origin, namely the newspapers themselves.”

“In short,” Simon testified, “the parasite is slowly killing the host.”

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