I believe I may have discovered why the portion of the Wire set at the Sun doesn't ring true. It may not have anything to do inherently with the depiction of the newsroom, but rather that the story here is depicted differently than the rest of the series, and that the rest of the series is depicted the same.

That is, "The Law," "The Street," "The Hall," "The Port" and "The School" (per the nomenclature on HBO's website) are all defeated institutions. All are past any glory days they had. Also, they are being reformed, or at least their shortcomings resisted, by "heroes". The Law had McNulty and his brashness and Bunny and his hopeful daring. The Street had Stringer Bell and Prop Joe who tried to reform their industry. The Hall had Carcetti and his ambitions to fix things. The Port had Frank Sobotka trying anything to save his union's jobs. And the School had Prez. McNulty is a drunk again, Bunny was shitcanned, Stringer and Prop Joe are dead, and Carcetti got corrupted. All were defeated by already defeated insitutions except Prez. What ever happened to Prez.

But the newspaper as depicted is not yet defeated. Rather, it is dying. The Sun has yet to sink to the depth of the other milieus depicted. As such, it has no room for a putative "hero", but rather needs a villain. It needs a character to attack and undermine whatever validity and goodness the newspaper still has. Otherwise there is no story. Hence the ambitious Templeton character.

Ostensibly Gus Haines would/could serve as the hero, here. But he is shown not as breaking the rules to make the newspaper a better place. He is shown holding on to dying vestiges of quality and standards. The Templeton character would have to be significantly reduced for the newspaper storyline to parallel the rest of the series.

Wouldn't it be more interesting if instead of having a "bad" reporter on the loose at a "good" newspaper, we had a "good" reporter on the loose at a "bad" newspaper. This character could be really pursuing McNulty's fake serial killer and try to get his bosses to publish his stories undermining McNulty and showcasing flaws in the way "The Law" does it's business. And the newspaper could be resisting him, forcing him to "promote" this story, or at least force him (or how about a her, for a change) to follow stats or something similar and already shown to be a waste of time. Wouldn't that fit in better with the rest of the Wire? Wouldn't that make for better television?


But then Simon wouldn't have his straw man. I am not a journalist, but most of the journalists seem to comment on how the depiction of the Sun is dated; i.e. no internet or cellphones, etc. He seems more concerned with the simple fall from grace of of his profession than looking at where it is today and all it's complexities. Perhaps Simon is stuck in this past and sees this as a chance to really let loose on his hobby horse.

But then, what do I know?