COMM 337: In class exercise for Oct. 29

Television producer David Simon, the subject of Margaret Talbot's profile of his TV show in The New Yorker, was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun before he left the newspaper business and went to the HBO show "The Wire." What specific attitudes and instincts of a reporter has he taken with him into TV?

[Here's an example, Simon complains about "the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line." That's typical of reporters, who tend to see the effects of cost-cutting by management, i.e. the "bean counters," as taking away the resources reporters need to do their job right, making them "do less with less." You will find plenty of others as Simon and other newspaper people quoted in Talbot's article talk about their philosophies of life, their ways of getting information out of people, the way they listen to people, their attitudes toward the truth and a wide variety of other matters, large and small.]

In class today: Skim-read back through Talbot's article "Stealing Life," and find three or four passages containing good examples of a reporter's way of thinking on the part of Simon or his former Baltimore Sun colleagues who are working on the show. On the blog you're keeping for COMM 337, (1) quote the passage, (2) explain what you learn from it about reporting and (3) analyze how it can help you in your career as a professional writer and editor.

Since it's on your personal blog, don't be afraid to use your own voice. A couple or three of you are establishing a distinctive way of writing on your blogs that I think you'll be able to include in your portfolios. And most of the rest of you are showing raw talent, and I think everybody who's bothering to post will be able to develop it into the kind of thing you'll be able to show editors and personnel office people before long.