Line Wrapping Cell Renderer - Java

I am having trouble implementing a custom cell renderer which will wrap message content when it extends past one line in length. The following is what I have:

public class MessageTable extends JTable
{

    private static MessageTable messageTable;
    private DefaultTableModel model = new DefaultTableModel();
    private String[] emptyData = {};
    private TreeMap<Integer, String> messages = null;

    public class LineWrapCellRenderer  extends JTextArea implements TableCellRenderer {

        @Override
        public Component getTableCellRendererComponent(
                        JTable table,
                        Object value,
                        boolean isSelected,
                        boolean hasFocus,
                        int row,
                        int column) {
                this.setText((String)value);
                this.setWrapStyleWord(true);                    
                this.setLineWrap(true);      

                this.setBackground(Color.YELLOW);

                int fontHeight = this.getFontMetrics(this.getFont()).getHeight();
                int textLength = this.getText().length();
                int lines = textLength / this.getColumns() +1;//+1, because we need at least 1 row.                       
                int height = fontHeight * lines;                        
                table.setRowHeight(row, height);
                return this;
        }
    }

    public MessageTable()
    {
        super();
        messageTable = this;
        this.setSelectionMode(ListSelectionModel.MULTIPLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION);      

        model.addColumn("Message Number", emptyData);开发者_运维技巧
        model.addColumn("Message Content", emptyData);

        this.setModel(model);
        this.setFont(MappingView.theFont);

        this.setDefaultRenderer(String.class, new LineWrapCellRenderer());
    }

    /**
     * Set the current messages.
     * @param messages
     */
    public void setCurrentMessages(TreeMap<Integer, String> messages)
    {
        clearCurrentMessages();

        this.messages = messages;

        if (messages != null)
        {
            for (Integer key : messages.keySet())
            {
                String[] row = { key.toString(), messages.get(key).toString() };
                model.addRow(row);
            }
        }
    }

For some reason, the LineWrapCellRenderer is never used and the rows only ever contain one line of text.

What am I doing wrong?

Your cellrenderer is not used because the default table model returns Object.class for any column (it does not override AbstractTableModel's implementation):

public Class<?> getColumnClass(int columnIndex) { 
    return Object.class;
}

So either override the method yourself for the model or assign the renderer to Object.class.