"The Wire:" Exploring the Newsroom

In this season of "The Wire," there are a number of specific issues the show focuses on in concern to the newsroom and journalism across the board. There is a strong focus on the corporate ownership of newspapers well as recent trends in print journalism.

One aspect that stood out to me is the shows portrayal of newspapers in society and how the Internet relates to its success, or failure. In the show, one of the characters involved with The Baltimore Sun, envisioned a paper that did not have a focus on the Internet and did not want to see newspapers fade out and Internet sources fade in. The show explained that even the corporate owners of the Sun agreed with this vision for a long time and had a means to keep the paper the way it was, without the assistance from a Web site.

This however, could not last, which brings the show to illustrate what is changing about news and the newsroom. The paper was forced to make significant job cuts because the paper was receiving a significant less amount of readership. More people, especially younger readers were choosing not the read the print newspaper due to the Internet being available to them.

This focus on the show actually brings about a number of topics including job cuts, corporate ownership and the era of print journalism fading away. I think the show portrayed an accurate message of what is going on in the newsroom today.

This issue, in a way scares me because I fear that going into the journalism industry; it may be tough to keep a job. Print journalism is, I believe, dying out and only the journalists with great multimedia skills are left. Even so, this only makes me aware that, while in school, it is my duty to become as prepared as I possibly can be by learning so many new aspects of reporting that have become very popular in today's society.

"The Wire: Season 5" has done a great job at illustrating what is going on in the world of news and sort of helps open the eyes up to aspiring journalists, letting them know what they are getting in to. The characters in the episodes say that this trend was coming along and for the most part did not want to see it be present. THey, as well as the corporate owners saw a desire to have the paper maintain it's print aspects but society would not allow this to continue without there being significant changes.