monsoonmartin

My Weather-Friends,

As many of you know, I consider “The Wire” the finest television show in the history of the medium. It has just begun its fifth and final season on HBO, and the focus this go-round is the media and its struggles and failures. The season will be centered around a newsroom (a fictional Baltimore Sun) while still following some of the other plot threads (schools, drug trade, police activity, city hall) that have developed over the previous four seasons. Since there was a lot of jargon being thrown around in Episode 51, and because I have some background in the field of Journalism, I thought I'd put together a sort of running glossary/guide for the terminology used. I am, of course, open to corrections or clarifications on any of these points. (I would also like to thank the members of the Yahoo! Wire group in advance for the fine-tuning this list has already undergone.) The show airs Sunday nights at 9 on HBO with episodes appearing On Demand the Monday previous to airing.

Enjoy!

Monsoon

“The Wire” Journalism terms

Episode 51

The Baltimore Sun is the newspaper of record for the state of Maryland, having been founded in 1837. It is now owned by the Tribune Company in Chicago, which also owns the LA Times, the Orlando Sentinel, and other papers in addition to its broadcast media holdings.

The open floor plan layout of the Sun’s newsroom on “The Wire” is very true to life. It was designed as such to maximize interaction among a newspaper’s various departments and desks, unlike a traditional office, which is usually fragmented by a series of high cubicle walls. As the Sun’s City Editor Gus Haynes (played by Clark Johnson) says, “I’ll tell you what a healthy newsroom is. It’s a place where people argue about everything, all the time.” More competition, overworked and younger employees, and lack of job security have dampened this free and spirited exchange of ideas in modern newsrooms. Though the (real) Sun’s TV critic pans the portrayal of his newspaper on “The Wire” as simplistic and mired in jargon, I think it’s nuanced and brilliant.

The Managing Editor referred to in the first conversation is the second-highest in rank after the executive editor, and is directly responsible for most of the day-to-day operation of the newspaper.

A Foreign Bureau is physically located in a foreign country and usually includes reporters and an administrative staff (whereas a Foreign Affairs Desk is dedicated to foreign reporting but is physically located on the premises of the publication). In the first news scene, the three gentlemen are discussing the rumored closings of all foreign bureaus, including Johannesburg and Beijing.  Foreign bureaus are typically expensive to maintain, so cost-cutting measures target them aggressively, opting to rely instead on foreign reporting by the
Associated Press (AP) or other foreign bureaus.

The three gentlemen by the newspaper loading dock are also discussing impending layoffs and buyouts, “as bad as in Philly.” This refers to the recent downsizing of staff throughout layoffs, early retirements, and buyouts at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. This is endemic to mid-size to large newspapers throughout the country, which are still profitable—but less so, due to declining circulation, loss of readership and ad revenues, etc. The publishers and managing partners of the news outlets panic because profitability is down—though still fairly robust compared with other industries—and begin laying off workers. It has been argued that profitability is down as well because content is made freely available online, which is not the case in other countries. Buyouts began in earnest in the 1990s and in most cases, when a worker is “bought out,” the job itself is eliminated as well. David Simon himself took one of the initial buyouts at the Sun. Many departments are now expected to churn out the same quality product with half its former staff size.

An illustration of this phenomenon is when another, smaller paper “scoops” the Sun on a transportation story the Sun should have gotten. While Haynes reminds the managing editor that the Sun has not had a transport reporter since the last round of buyouts, the managing editor reminds his staff that “just because Chicago does a little belt-tightening is no reason for us to fall down,” referring to the Tribune Company’s ownership of—and immediate and incessant cost-cutting measures at—the Sun. He then utters the famous phrases (which resonates through the police subplot as well), “You’ll just have to do more with less.” In one of the HBO documentaries about the fifth season, David Simon adds, “Of course you don’t do more with less; you do less with less.”

Haynes complains to a reporter that he’s always having to rework his lead.  The lead (sometimes spelled lede) refers to the first sentence or two of a news piece, which conveys as much of the 5W and 1H (who, what, where, when, why and how) as possible. Particularly in today’s world of short attention spans, the headline and lead are often the only things a reader will actually read as he or she peruses the newspaper. Here is a very good example of a lead from the January 2nd edition of the Washington Post: “Candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations rallied supporters in Iowa today on the eve of the state's caucuses, as new polls showed tightening races among the leading contenders in both parties.”

Later in this exchange, Haynes asks the reporter to get him material by the “e-dot deadline” and later mentions a “double-dot deadline.” According to a Yahoo! Wire group member: “Dots are also called bugs. They're tiny marks you see at the top of the page if the page has been reworked for a later edition. Pages for the first edition (also called Four-Star) have an 11:30pm deadline (approx) and have no extra mark on the page. Five-star, or E-dot, is marked with one dot and would be the the five-star (next edition, the deadline is around 12:30am). Five-star chase, or double dot, is the final, marked with a letter F or C or a dot and a letter F or C and that close is anywhere from 1:15am to 2:30am depending on what kind of news day is happening.”

A deadline, of course, is the time set by which a step of the reporting process must be completed—copy deadline refers to when a story’s finished draft must be submitted to a copy editor; print deadline refers to the moment an edition must be finished and laid out to be sent to the printer. An article is often referred to as a “piece.”

From another Yahoo! Wire group member: “The path is story creation, then source editing (do the facts make sense? too much or too little of something in the story), copyediting (correct typographical errors), slot editing (does it fit on the page space allotted to it? plus putting in the headline, pull quotes and so on), then the page is checked and approved. You can't have all the stories done at the same time, because then your various editors would have too much to do all at once.

“Similarly, they can't send all the pages at once, because there is a limited number of plates that can be made at once. If they want to change ten pages on deadline, it's a really big deal, and they may let the pages go if they're not actually erroneous and do a ‘chase.’ This is where they replace the plates on the press after printing the first few, or if it's multiple presses they hold back on one press and put on the new ones, then stop the first and replace the old ones, all so they won't miss the press deadline for first good paper out of the pressroom.

“Color pages require multiple copies (cyan magenta yellow black) and every page has to have two plates because they put two copies on the drum, so plate A impresses and then plate B. Unless it's a "collect" run, but that doesn't happen very often.”

A columnist is a newspaper employee who is paid to write periodic (usually weekly or biweekly) columns for the paper, which can be humorous, lifestyle, related to politics or civic life, business, sports, or any number of niches.
It’s one of the few places in the newspaper (the other being the op-ed page, or opinion-editorial page) where a newspaper employee may offer his or her opinion.  Haynes derisively remarks that columnists are “paid to sit on [their] asses.”

The Associated Press (AP) is a news organization that employs a vast (though shrinking) network of reporters to produce stories that will be syndicated throughout the country—and sometimes the world. Sometimes the AP will “pick up” a story that is of wider interest from a local or regional newspaper and syndicate it to other news outlets. On these occasions, the local reporter receives additional pay and his or her newspaper is highlighted as one that is producing quality journalism. Newspapers must pay to use AP articles, of course.

Haynes shouts on a couple of occasions that he needs “budget lines.” He’s looking for shorter pieces of background relating to the developing city budget.  Another theory from a Yahoo! Wire group member: “The budget is the list of stories scheduled to be printed that night. Without more context I'm not sure what Haynes is asking for, but he's probably asking to be allowed to put more stories in.”

A reporter asks, “What about art for the Hopkins press conference?” Art here refers to photographic illustration of a story, which is essential for prominent pieces. Because downsizing occurs among the photography staff of a newspaper too, though, it’s difficult to get a photographer to every newsworthy event.

A couple of things related to newspaper “art”: first, a “grip-and-grin” is a derisive term for a photograph of a civic event that features participants shaking hands and posing—as the announcement of a new initiative, the donation of funds, etc. Also, Haynes is incensed when he receives the “art” for an East Baltimore row house fire because it features a charred doll in the foreground.  This composition is a common—and lazy—way for a photographer to convey the sense of loss and the ways in which a fire may have affected a home’s children.
Haynes speculates that since all of the photographer’s fire photos have a burnt doll or singed toy in the foreground, he must have a trunk full of them and some lighter fluid so he can stage the photograph just right.

Various desks are mentioned—state desk, metro desk, city desk. These are dedicated “departments” whose reporters cultivate knowledge of, and write pieces about, civic affairs in the city, metropolitan area, and state. The reporting in these areas has suffered mightily as a result of cutbacks, particularly at a place like the Sun, because older reporters with lots of contacts and expertise are being “bought out” and inexperienced recruits fresh out of “j-school” (journalism school), who will work cheaply, are hired.

Another cost-cutting measure that has been used for years by newspapers is the use of floaters and stringers. A floater is a part-time or full-time reporter who is not bound to any particular desk or specialty. The problem here is that one becomes mediocre at lots of different things, but not excellent at any of them. A stringer is a freelance writer hired by the newspaper on an as-needed basis and paid per article. Stringers sometimes have specialized knowledge (like the “College Park stringer” mentioned in the episode) and are often used to attend municipal meetings, cover local sporting events, and the like.

The editors discuss “20 inches” and “15 inches” at different times here. This refers to the length of an article, and is technically measured in “column-inches.” A column-inch is a one inch deep (long) and one newspaper
column wide. Reporters—particularly ambitious ones, or those for whom brevity is difficult—are forever trying to get more inches.

Some stories “go national” (are picked up by the national press because their appeal or newsworthiness transcends regional considerations, as with the 22 bodies story). Another reporter, however, contends that this story did not “have legs”—meaning that it did not become the source of ongoing follow-up pieces or deeper investigation. The ultimate story with “legs” was Watergate.

The ambitious reporter Scott Templeton (played by Tom McCarthy) is chagrined at being sent to “pull clips” and “check the morgue files” so he can write the “A-matter” on Ricardo’s history. He is being asked to check through the Sun’s archives (electronic files, physical clippings, and possibly even microfiche or film) to find previous articles about the principals in this story so he can provide the background material (which will be presented “up front”) against which the story can be told. It’s essential but unglamorous work that young reporters often draw.

The editors, late at night, determine that the Ricardo story “deserves a front” and will appear on the “front page, below the fold.” This means that the story is newsworthy enough to merit inclusion on the “jump page” or front page, but will not appear “above the fold” where screaming headlines and attention-grabbing images are shown. The “jump page” is so called because this is typically the only page in the first section from which articles “jump” (are continued on a subsequent page, indicated by a “jump line”—please see Ricardo on A12). In this configuration, six or seven articles can be included on the front page, with probably only one or two above the fold, and they all jump to the inside pages. Note that there has been some discussion about whether the jump page actually might refer to the page to which many of the jumps go.

Alma Gutierrez (Michelle Paress) is complimented on her ability to secure a quote from the article’s subject when Haynes says to her, “Good pull.” For her efforts, she receives a contributing line (or contrib line), which doesn’t
impress Templeton, but means she’ll receive something like “with additional reporting by Alma Gutierrez” under the main reporter’s byline (name) or (usually) at the conclusion of the piece. A “pull quote” is also the name for a quote that is featured in larger font surrounded by rules (lines, or a box) in an article to draw the reader in; Alma may have contributed a quote from the subject that was used in a pull.

Templeton states that he wishes to get out of Baltimore because it has “shit news,” but Alma is clearly invigorated by her work and feels that “the Sun is still a pretty good paper.” Templeton wants to move up and out—when asked
where, he answers, “The Times or Post, where else?” He’s referring to the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two most respected newspapers in the United States, widely considered the pinnacle of the profession.
“When did this break?” is asked of the Ricardo story. Bill Zorzi’s character (is he playing himself?) is asking when the story “became” news—not only when it occurred, but when someone realized it was newsworthy.

Finally, Templeton asks Haynes who is “doing the react piece” on the Ricardo story, because he sees that it could be a story that “has legs.” A react(ion) piece seeks to broaden the story by talking with associates of the principals, political figures, and others to assess the impact of the original story.

END OF EPISODE 51 NOTES.