David Simon Loves Common People

The Believer has a great interview with The Wire co-creator David Simon conducted by Nick Hornby. In explaining why he drowns viewers in unfamiliar information--like the code of the Baltimore streets--and lets them figure it out on their own, over time, Simon recalls the way his newspaper editors pushed him to write for the "average reader." The editors had a pretty narrow definition of what that meant:

The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Woo! Simon has higher expectations for average. At least someone still does.