I love The Wire. It is the best written, directed and acted show I think I have ever seen on TV (and I have watched a lot of TV in this lifetime). There seem to be quite a few who agree with me, like the folks at Salon and Slate.

Over the year’s the show has tackled drugs, political corruption, security at the docks (or lack thereof) and the failure of the public school system in Baltimore. This season the issue is the slow death of the newspaper business. Given the recent news from the SDUT about buy outs and layoffs and today’s news from the LATimes, the show’s theme is timely. And painful to watch.

But here is an example of one newspaper fighting back. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
is going head-to-head with the Super Bowl as a superior advertising vehicle (thanks for the tip Allen). I don’t know if all those hot shot agencies that place Super Bowl ads will buy the premise that the newspaper delivers a higher market share but kudos to them for trying. More creativity and less cuts would be a good thing, not only for the folks at the papers but for the public that still relies on journalism to provide some modicum of the truth.