Crafty

"In the real world they pay professionals. That's why we call them pros." -- Carver

I finally caught the first episode of Season 5 of The Wire.

Now that the show's focus has widened to include my own trade, its almost Aristotelian* emphasis on virtue and craft seems even more emphatic. This thread runs throughout the series, a constant opposition of those who care about "the job" and those who care about the career.

The "natural po-lice" are craftsmen. They study the craft, learn the craft, and do it well. The central conflicts of the show are not between the police and the criminals, but between those who respect the craft and those who do not -- between those who view the standards of the craft as the most important set of rules and those who would substitute some other measure of success.

The dynamic is repeated, echoed and underscored in every setting. The same dividing line between craftsmen and careerists is seen in the school system, on the docks, in city hall and -- most explicitly -- among the drug dealers and others operating outside the law. Omar Little and Brother Mouzone could hardly be more different, but they find mutual respect due to their shared commitment to their peculiar craft.

Seeing that dividing line and that central conflict portrayed in the newsroom of the show's semi-fictionalized Baltimore Sun hits closer to home. Clark Johnson's city editor character, Gus Haynes, is a close cousin to Clarke Peters' detective Lester Freamon. Haynes doesn't have time for dollhouse miniatures -- his craft is "literature in a hurry" -- but he shares the same fierce attention to detail. The proper use of the verb "evacuate" and the question "What kind of people stand around watching a fire?" are, according to the standards of his craft, two parts of the same thing.

I've read reviews complaining that Haynes seems unrealistically heroic, or that the newsroom scenes are overly explicit, with the lines of right and wrong drawn in uncharacteristically broad strokes. We'll see. That can happen in a series' final season, when the writers sometimes feel a now-or-never pressure that can override a previously subtle touch. But to me the scenes in the newsroom were painfully real. The dialogue rang true with words and phrases I've heard -- or said myself -- dozens of times.

I would say that David Simon's fictional newsroom looks and feels just like the newsroom I work in, except that I don't work in a "newsroom" anymore. That word is now forbidden. The country's largest newspaper chain no longer has "newsrooms" -- it has "local information centers." I've only seen one episode of Season 5, but already I find I'd love to see Gus Haynes respond to that kind of corporate edict. So if Haynes is, to some extent, the wish-fulfillment expression of Simon's impatience with the sorry state of the craft of daily journalism, then I suppose I share his impatience and wish he'd made the point even more explicitly.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* In Simon's fully realized fictional world, the careerists reign and the craftsmen are, inexorably, punished. Their adherence to a different, external set of standards cannot be tolerated by the institutions that control them. So maybe this theme in The Wire has less to do with Aristotle than with James Joyce.

Comments

[mmack]

Fred,

In simpler terms, parts of The Wire sound like the age-old conflict between "Doing it right" versus "Just get it done". Working in IT for over fifteen years, I've grown quite accustomed to the phrase "There's always time to do it right later on".

I also loved your "local information center" story. The hallmark of a bureaucracy bereft of ideas: Take a simple concept and rename it with fancy sounding words to make it seem like you're doing something groundbreaking. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance . . . .

[Laertes]

"Local information center" makes me so sad.

Newsroom is a great word. It's evocative. It speaks of a busy place full of busy people steeped in tradition.

"Local information center" is... awful. It sounds like a disused room full of boxes of minutes from old city council meetings. Who thought replacing two crisp and evocative syllables with eight clunky ones was a good idea? Orwell warned us about this.

[Zonko]

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

I had no idea that newsroom is no longer 'allowed'. Local Information Center is absurd. I think a Kontrol or Kiosk or any K word, really, needs to be added on to the end, so at least you get a mildly amusing acronym out of the deal.

No more newsrooms. That's just...unAmerican!

[Ray]

Just starting season 3
SSssshhhhhhhh!

[not_scottbot]

Interestingly, a post at Calculated Risk ( http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/01/turns-out-judges-dont-like-efficient.html ), especially in the comments, discusses another dimension of this - how corporate culture dominates reality, until those within it are no longer able to appreciate that their made up world is not actually shared by others.

Even more interestingly, this is a major aspect of what Web 2.0 is about - the careerists using the craftsmen for profit. For a minor example, having a comments section which allows for the harvesting of information which can be in turn sold - and the better the comment sections (at least in terms of ROI), the higher the profit (the offer from a new hoster was not made out of simple human charity). Which in turn leads to the necessity of making sure, for example, that a comments section does not disrupt the site's profit flow. Google and its web of information collecting mechanisms may be the best example of this, but a lot of fairly minor web sites, especially those re-opening comments after a pause, are obviously not doing it out of a heartfelt desire to bring back a time when the amateur ruled the Web.

But the fact that the careerists rise to the top of the pond, like the scum they tend to be, is just another truth of human existence. What tends to be harder to bear, for a true craftsmen (who tend to be rare, though a good number can be seen in the Linux world), are those careerists insisting that their petty decisions are for the greater good. Bill Gates comes to mind.

Now if only a TV series could accurately handle another groups of humans we must all endure - the fanatics, those not merely convinced of the superiority of their beliefs, but who wish to destroy those who do not share it. A fairly reliable indicator of such fanaticism is seen in its attempts to extinguish any discussion which opposes what the fanatic considers self-evident.

[Praline]

I've only managed to see up to the end of 3 so far, what a show what a show what a show. Is season four good, or will it make me sad and disappointed?

[damnedyankee]

Perry White stormed out of his office, cigar clenched firmly in his teeth as he waved around the evening edition of the Daily Planet.

"Kent! You and Olsen don't get paid to stand around jawing in the local information center! I want stories, and I want them now! Get moving!"

Neither Clark Kent nor Jimmy Olsen moved a muscle. The expression on their faces stopped Perry cold. They were looks of distant sadness, a remembrance of a long-lost, but beloved friend.

Perry sighed. He visibly relaxed and took the cigar out of his mouth.

"I know, guys, I know," he said. "It's just not the same..."

The moment was broken when Lois Lane snatched the cigar out from between Perry's fingers and tossed it away.

"Sorry, chief," she shrugged. "New rule from corporate. It's a 'no smoking' building."

Perry White buried his face in his hands.

[mmack]

not_scottbot,

I read the Calculated Risk link and all I could think of was the movie Brazil, and arresting Mr. Buttle instead of Mr. Tuttle.

Sam Lowry: I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.

Sam Lowry: I only know you got the wrong man.
Jack Lint: Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the *right* man. The wrong one was delivered to me as the right man, I accepted him on good faith as the right man. Was I wrong?

[twig]

Excellent post as usual. : )

[Quixote]

"Newsroom" informs. "Local Information Center" obfuscates. If someone told me to go to the Local Information Center, I'd probably wander down to the kiosk at the mall where you can ask directions and buy lottery tickets.

[Fraser]

At my chain, reporters are now "content providers." I can't think of a blander term.

[Elphaba]

Praline, the fourth season is (in my opinion) the best one. This is partially because it dovetails with my own interests, but i thought it got the social criticism balanced with realistic and compelling characterization pretty well. It drags a bit in the middle.

On Orwellian Speech Control -
Where I used to work, in a residential facility with adults who have mental illnesses, we actually got a handout specifying certain terms we were required to replace. Some of them I wholeheartedly support (for instance, I would say "person with schizophrenia" rather than "schizophrenic," because I don't want to define the person by their illness (but that word change is just an outward sign of an attempt at inward attitude change, and its meaningless when mandated by corporate yahoos). But this handout had me in fits of laughter. We could not say, for instance, that someone was "in" a wheelchair, only that they "used" a wheelchair. I can't recall some of the most egregious examples, but they were something like "older-American" instead of "Senior" (last I checked senior was a term of respect!).

[Cowboy Diva]

Elaine Viets in one of her early novels talks about life in the poorly disguised newsroom at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to wit:
When the powers that be decided to go from describing people of color of African descent as African-American instead of black, and went so far as to change the computerized copyediting system to automatically replace "black" with "African-American" in copy for press this meant that all of the sudden there were African-American cars, Mrs. Jane African-American and so forth, until someone fixed the glitch; all because they didn't think they could trust reporters to make the change themselves.

[damnedyankee]

At my chain, reporters are now "content providers." I can't think of a blander term.

I'm betting this caused many a private Spider Jerusalem moment: "I AM A X#$%ING JOURNALIST!"

Bowel disruptors at the ready! We're off to visit the Suits!

[Antid Oto]

In Simon's fully realized fictional world, the careerists reign and the craftsmen are, inexorably, punished.

Even when the craftsmen triumph, they don't accomplish what they think they will. Ultimately the good po-lice succeed in taking down Avon Barksdale. What's the result? Marlo Thomas.

I don't think Simon's underlying message is that if people were allowed to do their jobs, everything would work out fine. I think he believes there are major structural problems with our society that neither the craftsmen nor the careerists are capable of fixing.

That said, as Simon put it in a thread at Matthew Yglesias's blog, at least the craftsmen have dignity (to paraphrase his quote of Camus).

[Drak Pope]

At my chain, reporters are now "content providers." I can't think of a blander term.

It's fairly accurate though. Some of these guys see their jobs as to provide "content". It would be unfair and even derogatory to consider them "journalists" or "investigators" or even "correspondents" since they admit that their main goal is to regurgitate soundbites that are then cycled through multiple news stations around the country over and over until something else happens. They do provide content though. Lots and lots of sticky, gooey content.

[A-Diz]

Re: content > news

...that explains something that happened to me earlier this year. Through a series of convoluted journalism-school events I ended up drinking with an American war-correspondent (Kevin Sites, though I am not sure that means much to anyone). Interesting guy, but one of the more embittered journalists I've met yet. The frustration tended to leak out whenever we talked about his job. And by leak, I mostly mean that I think he would've felt better if we'd taken him up to the bell tower and let him through some large, breakable objects off it for a few minutes.

(All that said, I think Canada's media situation is in some ways worse. We all just seem more optimistic, even after a couple drinks.)

[Marc]

Antid, I think you might have your Marlo's confused. Unless 'My Girl' and Phil Donahue are slanging dope on some Baltimore corner...

[Antid Oto]

Heh. Of course.

[Richard Hershberger]

"I can't recall some of the most egregious examples, but they were something like "older-American" instead of "Senior" (last I checked senior was a term of respect!)."

What you are seeing is yet other link in an endless chain of ever-changing euphemisms. "Idiot" and "moron" started out as technical terms, but people started using them as insults. When I was a kid the acceptable euphemism was "mentally retarded" but already one could hear "retard" as a schoolyard insult. Then there was the whole digression into "special", in a failed attempt to co-opt a positive term. And so on. I'm not sure what the acceptable term is today, but tomorrow it will be a crude insult, so there is not much reason to try to keep up.

The problem is that condition being considered is widely considered as Not a Good Thing. Any attempt to euphemize is doomed to failure, as the euphemism will take on the negative connotations.

What I find interesting about "older American" is that the urge to euphemize the condition implies that the condition is inherently negative: an embarrassment to be whitewashed. Were I an "older American" I would find that far more insulting than whatever negative connotation someone chooses to read into "senior".

[Izzy]

Then there was the whole digression into "special", in a failed attempt to co-opt a positive term.

Heh. Between that and the networks' nauseating trend of airing Very Special Episodes of everything from G.I. Joe to Cheers...well, I don't think I've ever heard *anyone* in my generation use the word sincerely.

[Moreonthat]

Simon writing about his time at the Baltimore Sun and his reasons for leaving:

http://www.esquire.com/features/essay/david-simon-0308?src=rss

[Josh]

marc --"That Girl." Unless you know something about the subject of the Temptations' song that I don't . . .

[LL]

RE "content providers" - it's because of the Interactive people. My theory, anyway. At my company, the Interactive dept. refuses to call it "copy" or "text" or even "words." They always refer to it as "content." Other technobabble has become common because of the way everything gets thrown onto a website eventually: download (used in the context of having a meeting), doc (short for "document"), migrate (meaning to move things onto one website from another), etc. We wouldn't want to use a simple, easy to understand word like "copy." It's so 20th century.

I think fewer and fewer people whose job description would seem to indicate that they are journalists consider themselves journalists. Maybe because other "journalists" have spent the last few decades making that term meaningless or a sad joke (O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Colter, Moore, Geraldo, Drudge, Barbara Walters, etc.).