The Wire was so good, that Gus was like the 30th best character, and yet an entire show based around him alone would have been fantastic too. No show will ever have that many good characters again.
Just being "profitable" is irrelevant, what is more important is "does the profit margin from this business justify its continuation, compared with what we can get with a different business model".
I left a major publisher over 12 months ago. Found out two weeks ago my entire team which turned around well over 5 million in advertising annually got purged under the guise of COVID; same sentiments mirrored in this speech of a declining print market. It's all bullshit. 'Give a man an inch and he'll take a mile' perfectly sums it up; doesn't matter what you bring to the table.
I recently lost my job because the print publication I worked in got bought out. The same editor working for new owners offered me the exact same job, only with half the pay I used to have and a larger workload. "More with less" they kept saying. F*ck them.
I never understood the online hate for season 5. The plot isn't any more ridiculous than Hamsterdam. I wish Gus had been introduced way earlier like in season 3. He was one of the best characters on the show.
@@geordiejones5618 Hamsterdam was a brief suspension of disbelief but it was not at all far fetched. I seen places in North Philly that were totally open air drug (heroin) markets with no cops. Anywhere.
I got furloughed for 3 months during mid 2020. Fresh out of college 3 months into my first career job thinking I was hot shit. One day I get added to a teams meeting with a few hundred other people & we are told we are all getting furloughed for 3 months with the potential to maybe be brought back on after that time was over. I was lucky enough to get a letter in the mail saying they wanted me back, but a lot of people didn't get those letters. Whole experience was a wake up call. Taught me to never get too comfortable, always have a few months of savings tucked away, and to always remember to make my self indispensable.
@@brandonb3174 The IT department of a shipping company. Back then right as covid panic peaked mid 2020 people went out and bought a ton of supplies/groceries and didn't really spend their disposable income for a few months. Our company got less transport orders for awhile from both major distributors and restaurant chains and they didn't have the cash on hand to keep everyone. I didn't take the furlough personally. Spent 3 months on unemployment and thanked God when I got my letter in the mail saying things had picked back up and they were ready to bring some people back.
Newspapers needed a new business strategy. But instead of going for greater and greater integrity they went for more and more sensationalism. Now they are doomed.
That's an easy jab at an industry that people like to beat up on. You should blame a lazy, anti-intellectual public that would rather watch the Kardashians than read something substantive.
@@goodyeoman4534 The truth is that it comes from internet and cable news. When the media pie was cut into so many pieces, companies had to start worrying about ad revenue. As a result, they responded more and more to their audience. That audience wanted more yelling, more drama, and less thought. The reason I blame the audience is that there is thoughtful, intelligent reporting out there. Almost no one watches or reads it. You can't make people eat their vegetables if they only want to eat donuts and french fries.
As bad of a time as it was for newspapers back when this episode aired I can only imagine that it's only worse now. Once the older generation dies away there'll be less and less people who buy the newspaper. I only read the newspaper if I go over to the folks house or eat at Burger King.
Very true. My sister studies journalism and she told me how old school journalists and unpaid interns would have read 3200 pages of Wikileaks within 2 weeks. Today unpaid interns are too lazy to read anything beyond twitter, and they will read 200 pages of Wikileaks only if they get paid, not realizing that the 3200 pages would have been a perfect career opportunity which dozens of young journalists missed in 2016.
@@TradingKid1998 Keep in mind there's VERY rose tinted glasses when you look at that kind of stuff. Student loans have made it so kids coming out of college need to find jobs asap or else they risk loans they'll practically never get to pay off. If you aren't being paid then you're screwed no matter how good your intentions are.
@@TradingKid1998 Aw gee I won’t pay my workers a dime but they should be providing me more revenue! So lazy, these asshole interns finally learned what negotiating for yourself is. Just because news companies are too incompetent to pay people for value creating work doesn’t mean someone should pick a bad deal. I’d be wary of someone wastes their time on unpaid internships. Makes them seem like they’d make suspect choices
I had forgotten that David Costable, the guy who played Tom "with the specifics" also played Gale Boetticher the nerd chemist in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
@@gnolan4281 one of the great comedies of all time. You're not alone. I watched The Office for the first time in 2018. He's the third actor from The Wire that was on The Office I think.
I rewatched The Wire two years and remember visiting the Baltimore Sun website after finishing this season and it was as pathetic as you could imagine it. This was 15 years after the series had wrapped up but you could see that budget cuts had eaten away into every section except crime news and local sports. Really makes you think if things were this bad in 2006/07, how this scene would be playing out in the midst of Twitter and alternative news sites like Buzzfeed or Vice (which are now also teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and irrelevance).
It serves the same function in this case, but guilds were originally for merchants and craftsmen to band together for common interests. In Medieval times, you would have guilds for stone masons, jewelers, doctors, or for importers for example. It is more suited for non-hourly professionals instead of trade unions. The Screenwriters' Guild and the Directors' Guild are two of the more famous examples today.
"Why are there cuts in the newsroom when the company is still profitable?" This is becoming true in every industry in this neoliberal hellscape we exist in.
Answering specific questions with general platitudes: so corporate. I'm sure it's just a management fad, like the jargon that goes in and out of fashion. It's now used when there's really no reason for it. I don't think it helps management actually. People just lose confidence in managers who don't talk straight.
The insights of the show about the media where ahead of its time, showing the decline of quality investigative journalism with sensationalism. I wasn’t impressed initially with the Press part of Season 5, but it was actually accurate of the trends that were coming. I thought Gus was a little one-dimensional. Though I think the could have made him a little more complex character, he represented that old-school reporter with integrity and a consciousness, something that is missing in the modern press.
Yes, my friend- my partner is finishing an advanced degree in communications, and has taught me that a great number of people in journalism (and related comm fields) are facing hard times when trying to get a job in their field. The market's flooded, and demand for these jobs are shrinking. Not to rain on an already-rainy parade, but at least you're aware of the situation, so you can make a good decision about it. Good luck!
I wouldn't say Scott is low skilled, he just has bigger aspirations than the Baltimore Sun. The conversation he has with Alma at the bar in episode 2 reveals this. He's just using the Sun as a stepping stone to get to the NY Times or some other big paper. In order to do that, you need to win pulitzers or write big stories, hence his motivation to fabricate the serial killer. No different than say a Stephen Glass. Guy is a glory hound.
And in the end , he wins the Pulitzer ! The phonies, cheats and careerists win out in the end and the dedicated, honest journalists, police and politicians get screwed ! Love the Wire
there's no evidence that he has any skills at all. He certainly doesn't show any skill in constructing his fabrications, which are transparent and amateur.
