Putting All the Pieces Together

Clark Johnson, who plays Sun editor Gus Haynes, described him to me as "the kind of editor every good reporter dreams of." Is he just a dream or is he based on anyone in particular?
I had a great editor, Rebecca Corbett, from the time I was a city reporter right through to the years I worked on the Sun's enterprise reporting team. She is now at The New York Times and [is] one of the stars of the place. She made my s--t 30 percent better, day in and day out. So no, Gus is not simply a dream. There are great editors and mentors on many a metro desk, and I wrote Gus Haynes with a bit of Rebecca Corbett in mind. A bit of Steve Luxenberg, too, who was the metro editor when I got to The Sun and who is now at The Washington Post. I put admirable qualities of real people in there and then I added a few--blunt speaking, profane wit, courage of conviction--that I've always liked in certain characterizations. Credit Clark's performance with making Haynes as likeable as he is, but credible? Why yes, I've known some editors who led by example and by integrity and in my own career, I was blessed to be guided by a couple of them.

This may turn into more of a comment than a question, but either way I'd like to hear your thoughts. The three "bad" characters at the Sun--Templeton, the lying, overambitious reporter, and Whiting and Klebanow, the two top editors who coddle him--often feel more like caricatures to me than characters. Their sleaziness (in the case of the reporter) and their gullibility (in the case of the editors) seems to define them. "The Wire" has always impressed me with its willingness to find the complexity in all its characters, and so far, at least, I don't feel like these three have received the same courtesy. You and your writers seem particularly hateful toward these characters, maybe with good reason, but watching them, I can't help but wonder if your own experiences at the paper has colored your portrayal of them.
What would you have me say? Is the reporter who makes s--t up to serve his own ambition not going to be hateful to some viewers? Is Marlo not hateful for being a sociopath? Is Major Rawls not hateful for serving only his own interests? Are these characters somehow more nuanced? What do you, as a journalist, feel about Jayson Blair, about Jack Kelley, about Stephen Glass? Do you find it incredible that an ambitious soul would make s--t up and print it? Why? Are you that credulous? It keeps happening with a routine frequency. Do you think that the ones who get caught are the only guys doing it?

As for the editors with their eyes on the prize, are they different from Howell Raines and the guys at The New Republic who belittled the concerns of other editors and reporters, who derided the critique of such favored reporters as Bragg or Blair as jealousies and newsroom politics? They are who they are, and they are judging themselves by standards and accomplishments that lead them to be blind. I don't believe that Whiting and Klebanow are actively covering up what they know to be a fraud. We didn't write that at all. But they are resistant to hearing criticism of their newsroom culture and what they have wrought by emphasizing the wrong things. And this is exactly what came to be known about the editors who impaled themselves on Blair, Kelley, Cooke. We've depicted the higher editors exactly as they were said to have behaved in the inevitable post mortems that followed those scandals. It's accurate and it's precise.

One of the things I've loved about "The Wire" over the years is the way it shows how something so quotidian as incompetence can contribute to the decay of a city, and surely there are newsrooms in cities across the country filling up with young, naive, ambitious, simply not-very-good--but perfectly honest--reporters. Why was it necessary to take Templeton's character into such obviously unsympathetic territory?
We wanted to explore the fundamental dishonesty of a reporter cooking it because, again, we believe the problem is more common than the profession would wish readers to believe. And let me reverse the question on you: Is it possible to write a reporter who is making s--t up for any other reason than personal ambition? What other reason is there? Guys who cook it do so because they want to come to the campfire with an even better story than they actually have. Why? Because it makes them the best storyteller in the room and establishes them as a star in the firmament. The ambition is the raison d'etre of the sin itself.

Also, "The Wire" has shown many things that have shaped tragedy in our mythical Baltimore. In your question, you are choosing the quotidian incompetence and exalting it, as if it's all just bureaucratic failure and missed opportunities. But personal ambition has been on display in every institution and has led to failure: the desire for personal promotion, to be elected, to get paid. What "The Wire" has shown as much or more than quotidian incompetence is a citywide web of conflicting ambitions and desires. Valchek is so petty he wants to destroy another man and his union over a church window, an act of sheer vanity. Carcetti has betrayed principles and people in need on any occasion that gets him closer to holding higher office. Yet you give them a buy as somehow more authentic than Templeton? Is it because you don't expect much of police majors and politicians to begin with? Take a look at what would impel you to ask the question now, when a journalist is the one on the block.

When a friend who loves the show asked me to describe the fifth season so far, I told him "Everyone pretty much goes nuts." It's a flip summary, for sure, but is it accurate?
I think it's flip, sorry. The season is about how far individuals and institutions and society in general can go on a lie. And if you think that theme is hyperbolic and that lies as big as manufactured serial killers and hyped newspaper copies are too big and too outrageous to sustain themselves, I'd simply point to this ugly mess of a war we are in, why we are in it, what was printed and broadcast and declared by the nation's elite and its top media outlets. You look at Iraq and how we got there and McNulty and Templeton are pikers by comparison. The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them. Everybody goes crazy? Who? McNulty? Freamon? They quit playing by the rules in a rigged game. That's almost a form of sanity, self-destructive as it might turn out to be.

© 2008