Sources inside the Reader tell me that the staff found out about the Chapter 11 filing in time-honored fashion: they read about it on the internet, 15 minutes before the staff meeting scheduled to announce it was convened. For those with short memories, this is a nice echo of the day last year when the production department found out it was being laid off en masse by  . . . reading about it on Crain’s Chicago Business. And the Loafers wonder why no one likes them. You can’t say they’re not consistent.

I just finished watching Season Five of The Wire, and while I still think it’s [totally-awesome/the-best-show-on-TV-ever/your-own-superlative-here], the newsroom story line bugged me. David Simon’s made no secret of his scorn for his former profession, in particular his employers at the Baltimore Sun, but the screetching of the whetstone, as he ground his ax to a razor’s edge, almost drowned out the nuanced attention to detail that is the magic of the whole series.

I’ve sat through meetings where 60 people jam into a room around a publisher standing on a chair as he details declining revenues. I’ve heard managers repeat the excruciating mantra, “We have to do more with less”–and I’ve tried my best to follow through, with predictably compromised results. But I thought Simon’s sanctimonious publisher executive editor was a cartoon, his Pulitzer-lust and narcissistic old-boy networking spelled out in such screaming type that it seemed Simon had forgotten that whole “show don’t tell” thing. Ditto, the gutless managing editor, who throughout the season displays nothing but respect for the judgement of his experienced, scrupulous, and apparently infallible city editor — except when it comes to said city editor’s documented evidence of one young reporter’s credulity-straining lies.

It just didn’t add up. No professionals, I said to myself, could rise so far in the ranks of a huge organization without some degree of competence, and that competence wouldn’t suddenly be suspended for fear of wounding the bottom line. I thought David Simon had let his resentments get the better of him.

Now I think maybe I am just naive.