Assembly line to mediocrity

Before David Simon created the critically acclaimed television shows "The Wire" and "Homicide," he was a newspaper reporter at the Baltimore Sun. In this commentary, and in earlier interviews I've read, he makes many of the points I've tried to make - though he's often more eloquent - about the self-inflicted decline of the American newspaper.

Simon says: And which, exactly, is the proper epitaph for the generation that entered newspapering at the very moment when the big-city dailies -- the fat morning papers, those that survived the shakeout of afternoon tabloids and other weak sisters -- seemed impervious, essential and ascendant? Were we the last craftsmen prepared for a horse-and-buggy world soon to prostrate itself before the god of internal combustion? Or were we assembly-line victims of the inert monopolists of early 1970s Detroit, who thought that Pacers and Gremlins and Chevy Vegas were response enough to Japanese and European automaking superiority?

Take the time to read past the jump on this one.