David Simon keeps on doing all sorts of cool things!

On March 1, David Simon wrote this magical (jajaja) op-ed piece for the Washington Post about journalism/the crime beat in Baltimore. I read it a long time ago, but it barely dawned on me to post it here. Journalism is so necessary! I do not have the faintest idea what will happen after the demise of all these newspapers. I was shocked when I heard about the Rocky and the possible closing of the SF Chron.

Anyway!!

I love this man!

In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police

"Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.

"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.

"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.

"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."

To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet."

Please read!