In that vein, there is a long, long article on "The Wire" in the Oct 22 New Yorker.
It sounds like a great 5th season: "about perception vs reality -- in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can't. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals--stories that have a clean moral. "It's like, Find the eight-hundred dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who's double-billing," Simon said at one point. "that's their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems--newspapers are not designed to understand it."
The next Simon/Burns HBO project: a mini series called "Generation Kill" based on the 2004 book by Evan Wright and focusing on a Marine platoon in Iraq.
Enjoy,
Joanna