‘The Wire’ vs. The Sun

In four previous seasons, “The Wire” chronicled Baltimore’s failing or corrupt institutions – the police department, labor unions, City Hall, public schools – that swallowed even the pure souls within them.

Executive producer and lead writer David Simon’s latest target is arguably his most personal.

For its fifth and final season, which begins tonight on HBO, “The Wire” ventures into the newsroom of The Sun, Baltimore’s newspaper of record, where Simon worked for 13 years as a police reporter before he took a buyout in 1995.

Unsurprisingly, Simon isn’t pleased with what’s happened since then. “The Wire” shows The Sun struggling to maintain its relevance amid profit-hungry corporate owners, obtuse editors and a drastically reduced reporting staff.

Foreign bureaus close. Veteran reporters who know their terrain are cast aside.

And into the void steps journalism’s boogeyman: an ambitious reporter (played to weaselly perfection by Tom McCarthy) who lacks talent or scruples and refuses to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Current Sun reporters and editors don’t dispute that recent buyouts and budget cuts have hurt the paper. But they don’t believe The Sun is any more vulnerable to a Jayson Blair-like fabulist as a result.

The show “no more depicts the real-life newsroom of The Baltimore Sun than ‘Law & Order’ depicts the real-life criminal justice system of New York,” says Timothy A. Franklin, The Sun’s editor.

Replies Nina K. Noble, an executive producer of “The Wire”: “I don’t think David is pointing any finger at The Baltimore Sun in particular. I think he’s frustrated with the state of media outlets around the country.”

Still, Sun staffers won’t have much trouble finding versions of themselves in “The Wire’s” newsroom, which was re-created on a soundstage because shooting in the real newsroom proved too expensive and logistically difficult. (Simon was allowed to use the newspaper’s actual name.)

While no current reporters appear on the show, several former ones do, and some plot threads appear to be drawn from Simon’s experiences.

“I think people in the newsroom understand that there’s a personal angle in this upcoming season for David,” Franklin says.

That’s putting it mildly. Simon has savaged former Sun editor William K. Marimow on several occasions, and he’s known for firing off long, profane missives when the newspaper publishes something that upsets him.

“David just goes crazy over things you wouldn’t think he’d take offense at,” says Jean Marbella, a metro columnist who’s been with The Sun for 20 years. “No one will ever show you these letters, but they end up being legendary.”

His revenge against Marimow has taken many forms – including the introduction of a loathsome police supervisor named Marimow in the show’s fourth season.

Simon says his low regard for Marimow and his predecessor, John Carroll, stems from his contention that they did not take seriously his concerns that a reporter for The Sun was inventing material.

“It’s about journalistic fraud and their unwillingness to deal with it,” Simon says.

Carroll says the reporter in question was disciplined after a story that resulted in a retraction, and that the reporter caused no further problems.

Marimow points to two lengthy articles written in journalism reviews in the late 1990s that praised him and Carroll for revitalizing the paper.

“In demeaning the work that John and I did, in my opinion, David demeans himself, not us,” Marimow says.

“I think that when someone harbors a grudge for so many years, it begins to poison the person who harbors the grudge.”

The Sun’s television critic, David Zurawik, believes Simon’s obsession with what went on at the newspaper more than a decade ago has hurt his storytelling.

Zurawik, who like many critics has championed “The Wire” as a brilliant, landmark series, argued in his fifth-season review that the newsroom scenes lacked the insight and topicality of the story lines about police, politicians and schools.

“Simon left The Sun in 1995, and his newsroom villains are patterned on editors and a reporter long gone from Baltimore,” Zurawik wrote. “But Simon presents his story as if it is taking place at The Sun today.”

Zurawik also faults Simon for writing the newspaper story line “like a morality play,” with obvious heroes and villains – something “The Wire” has scrupulously avoided in the past.

Simon posted a measured response to Zurawik’s review on Romenesko, a media news Web site, thanking him for voicing his honest opinion.

“Tim Franklin is right: The people on the ground in Baltimore, though there are less of them, are doing the most to produce the best newspaper they can,” Simon wrote. “He and his staff have nothing of which to be ashamed, nor was it our intent to in any way shame them.”

There’s still plenty of anticipation in the newsroom about the paper being featured on a series watched by millions – a show that has done little to counter the perception of a dysfunctional Baltimore characterized by violence, drugs and poverty.

“A lot of us are fans of the show and watch it pretty closely,” says John Fritze, The Sun’s City Hall reporter. “We’re all waiting to see how it’s portrayed.”

Are people nervous?

“I’m not sure nervous is the right way to put it,” Fritze says. “Maybe intrigued.”