"But here's the thing of which we can all be certain, the thing that fuels all the dramatic arcs of The Wire, in fact: the why is the only thing that actually matters. The who, the what, the when, the where, even the how – every other building block in which journalists and policy planners and political leaders routinely trade – amount to nothing beyond the filler, interchangeable with the facts flung a year ago, a year from now and decades hence.

The why is it. The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke."