Longreads

The creator of The Wire remembers a young man whose life as a 15-year-old drug dealer in Baltimore was depicted in his book The Corner:

"At first, he was content with the book we wrote about his world. By the time The Corner was published it was something of an epitaph for people who were already casualties. Not just DeAndre’s father, but Boo, Bread, Fat Curt, his cousin Dinky, Miss Ella from the rec center. The book was an argument that these lives were not without meaning, that they, too, were complete human beings in the balance. He liked that someone — anyone — thought the people of Fayette Street mattered.

"In time, though, he confessed to hating the last line of the narrative, the one in which he is defined as a street dealer and addict at the moment after taking his first adult charge in a raid on a stash house on South Gilmor Street. There was a burden in that, and he grew tired of its weight.

"'That isn’t the end of the story,' he complained to me years later. 'You don’t know that the story ends that way.'"

What's wrong with the crime stats in Baltimore? "The Wire" creator David Simon on how to fix them, and how beat reporting is necessary to understand the problem:

"So if you’ve read this far, and you understand the actual dynamic in play, you’re probably saying to yourself: What’s the solution? In the past, the detectives and lawyers simply swept their mistakes under the rug, with neither side taking responsibility for the bad stats. And now, because the state’s attorney has prevailed in this contest of statistical gamesmanship, the police department clearance rate has been savaged and some bad cases are no longer being charged, yet at the same time, good murder cases aren’t going forward. Which is worse? And how can this be fixed?

"Well, it’s easy. And I’ll give you as long as it takes you to read past the next string of asterisks."

Coming off acclaim for "The Wire," David Simon takes his approach to New Orleans with "Treme."

The critically acclaimed US television drama could not be made here. We have writing talent in abundance, but its output is controlled by a stifling monopoly—the BBC. Plus, an interview with "The Wire"'s creator David Simon

HBO's critically-acclaimed "The Wire" creator David Simon talks about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism.