It was only when he left The Baltimore Sun for what he terms “the fleshpots of Hollywood” that David Simon got to write about the city of Baltimore and its problems in a deep and comprehensive way.  His HBO series, The Wire, focused its final season on a fictional Baltimore Sun that hued close to the truth of Simon’s experience there and his struggles with editors he felt had abandoned their mission to cover the city in the quest for journalism prizes.  Simon’s views resonated with the profession, and as a former journalist he finds himself at the center of the conversation about journalism’s future.