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interrogation: Interviews with a point.

Behind The WireDavid Simon on where the show goes next.

By Meghan O'Rourke
Posted Friday, Dec. 1, 2006, at 2:27 PM ET

(Continued from page 6)

I don't want it to become onanistic. Obviously, I have a lot of memories of the Baltimore Sun. One thing I've always hated about TV portrayal of media is that it's always unfeeling assholes throwing microphones in the face of someone as he comes down City Hall steps.

I'll tell you a story. We had a press conference the first season. We staged it as a press conference really would be: a small room, some empty chairs. TV reporters are looking at print reporters to see what they ask; there is a pile of dope on the table; there is no sense of urgency. That is the way it always was. This was one of the only [production] notes we got [from HBO] the first season: What's up with that press conference? It looked so fake. At the time, I didn't have enough credibility with HBO to argue with the note, but I said Carolyn [Strauss, president of entertainment at HBO], you're raised on too much TV press.

The low end of journalism is not what concerns me. It's not that sensational stuff I'm worried about. It's that there may be no high end anymore, that the kind of thing journalists once aspired to, especially in the Washington Post-Watergate era, may no longer exist.

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Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's culture critic and the author of Halflife, a collection of poetry.
Photograph of David Simon by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images. Photograph of Michael K. Williams on Slate's home page by Paul Schiraldi/HBO.
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