sign in sign up
<<
Home , Detroit Free Press, Gannett, Metro Times, The Detroit News, The Michigan Citizen

Case Study View from Martina Guzmán

N APRIL 23, 2019, the HBO program WDET, WXYZ, and Fox 2 News—had a OReal Sports with Bryant Gumbel pro-development slant, framing the deal aired an exposé on Detroit’s Little Cae- as positive and offering little or no critical sars Arena.326 The segment brought re- analysis. By contrast, articles from newer newed attention to the arena’s owners, or alternative outlets with less reach— the billionaire Ilitch family, who also own Bridge Magazine, Detroit , the Little Caesars pizza chain, the De- and Motor Muckraker—were more troit Tigers, the Detroit Red Wings, and numerous, and only 3.6 percent were Olympia Entertainment. Five years earlier, pro-development.332 MARTINA GUZMÁN the family had brokered a deal with the Kirk Pinho, a reporter for Crain’s De- is an award- city that redirected $324 million in state troit Business who had been writing about winning tax funds, meant in part for Detroit Pub- the arena deal from the beginning, admits and documentary lic Schools, to build a sports stadium in that if he could do it all over again, he filmmaker from .327 In addition to the would do it differently. “I probably could Detroit. She is state subsidies, the city had transferred have been more critical, that’s for sure,” currently the land assessed at approximately $2.9 mil- Pinho says. “It could have been covered Damon J. Keith lion to the Downtown Development Au- more comprehensively early on.”333 Race and Justice thority, a partner in the arena deal, at a After Real Sports aired its damning Journalism Fellow cost of $1.328 piece on the arena, every major Detroit at the Damon J. Olympia Entertainment promised De- and local television station fol- Keith Center troiters that, in exchange for the money lowed up and started raising questions. for Civil Rights earmarked for the city’s schoolchildren, Just a few miles from the arena, in the rap- at Wayne State a majority of whom are black and live be- idly gentrifying North End neighborhood, University. low the poverty line,329 it would build a William Copeland, the justice director at development called the District Detroit, the East Environmental Action creating five new neighborhoods with Council, read one of those follow-ups and a footprint of fifty city blocks of land shook his head in disbelief. “The justice in downtown Detroit, replete with resi- community had been raising the alarm on dences, retail, and entertainment.330 as soon as the plans Five years after the initial announce- were made public,” he says. “There are ment, the District Detroit has yet to be Detroiters who predicted this. We saw it built. The downtown area that was sup- coming. We raised opposition.”334 posed to sprout housing and upscale Copeland adds that cover- neighborhoods now hosts 27 surface ing public meetings at the time seemed parking lots.331 uninterested in activists’ concerns and While local news covered the deal ex- did not pursue those leads. “Grassroots tensively at the time it was struck, that initiatives are underreported, not re- coverage, especially by legacy outlets, ported, or misreported,” he says. “More was largely uncritical. An independent people want to combat the injustices data analysis conducted for the Detroit they see, but the lens of the grassroots Equity Action Lab at Wayne State Uni- activity going on is so often missing.”335 versity, which examined more than 200 Copeland’s observations are echoed articles about the new arena published in a 2010 study from the University of from 2013 to 2015, revealed that 80 per- North Carolina (UNC) that examined 11 cent of the stories by the city’s major pa- major daily in North Carolina pers and TV stations—the Detroit Free and found that “local media favor profes- Press, , Click on Detroit, sional and formalized groups that employ Crain’s Detroit Business, Michigan Radio, routine advocacy tactics” and that they

LOSING THE NEWS 37 Construction of Detroit’s Little Ceasar’s Arena.

“work on issues that overlap with news- subtler ways than the recent local news papers’ focus on local economic growth crisis would suggest. and well-being.” By contrast, the study Unlike many U.S. today, Detroit found, “groups that are confrontational, still has multiple media outlets: two major volunteer-led, or advocate on behalf of daily newspapers (the novel issues do not garner as much atten- and The Detroit News), local and regional tion in local media outlets.”336 public radio stations (WDET and Michi- When established local media outlets gan Radio), a prominent Black newspaper overlook volunteer and community-led (The ), several eth- efforts, they miss out on important nic media outlets (Latino Detroit, Detroit stories. “I don’t think the Detroit me- Jewish News, etc.), an alternative weekly dia did its job vetting the details of the (Detroit Metro Times), and a monthly deal,” says Aaron Mondry, the editor of glossy magazine (Hour Detroit). Its com- Curbed Detroit, a digital outlet focused mercial TV news operations include on Detroit street life, housing, and de- affiliates of Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS. velopment. “It’s a generally known fact Numerous digital publications have also that sports stadiums are not good in- emerged in the past five years, among vestments.” Mondry points out that the them Outlier Media, Tostada Magazine, inadequate coverage has repercussions Riverwise, Planet Detroit Newsletter, and far beyond this one project. “If the media Motor City Muckraker—each with a staff isn’t doing its due diligence on some of of just four or fewer people.338 the biggest development projects in the And yet Detroit newsrooms are facing city,” he says, “then residents should be many of the same challenges as the rest skeptical of everything journalists pro- of the journalism industry, with shrinking duce. If we missed that, then what else staff, faithless corporate ownership, and are we missing, what else are we not tumbling ad revenue stemming from both looking into?”337 sharp declines in local retail and the si- phoning of ads and eyeballs by tech com- HE FAILURE OF DETROIT’S legacy me- panies such as Craigslist, Facebook, and Tdia outlets to investigate the arena Google.339 Legacy newspapers, in particu- deal more critically when it was first lar, have shrunk considerably. The Detroit brokered exposes an uncomfortable Free Press had 350 journalists on staff in truth: there are communities across the 1995 and has just 120 today.340 The Free country whose critical information needs Press and The Detroit News now deliver

have gone unmet for much longer and in just three print editions a week (including RICK BRIGGS

38 PEN AMERICA a Sunday edition published jointly to cut stories are being overlooked and their costs).341 In August, Gatehouse Media, a concerns neglected. mega–newspaper chain not known for When the Community Foundation for prizing serious watchdog journalism, an- launched the De- nounced that it would acquire , troit Journalism Engagement Fund, it the mega-chain that owns the Free Press, conducted a study that concluded that setting the stage for further staff cuts.342 “across platforms—whether print, digital, These economic pressures add to the television, or radio—there was reported challenge of providing deep, comprehen- a sense that Detroit’s most critical news sive local news—especially needed in a stories are under-covered. There was city that in 2013 filed for the largest mu- concern that most Detroit narratives are nicipal bankruptcy in American history.343 not being told—that coverage dispropor- Kimberly Hayes Taylor, a features re- tionately skews toward the revitalization “ By the time I left, porter at The Detroit News from 2002 of midtown and downtown Detroit at the I would say at to 2009, witnessed multiple rounds of expense of the rest of the city and of the least two or three buyouts and layoffs. “By the time I left, full diversity of its population, especially dozen people, I would say at least two or three dozen the African-American community.”349 people, newsroom-wide, had already left,” That neglect, the study found, feeds newsroom-wide, she says. “We’re talking about in business, “a lack of trust between many Detroit had already left,” in sports, and on the city desk and fea- citizens and the media institutions that says Kimberly tures. There are not as many photogra- cover, or fail to cover them. Indeed, this Hayes Taylor, a phers left.” What remains, she says, is “a lack of trust was described across racial features reporter shoestring, compared to what used to be and ethnic lines as an even greater barrier at The Detroit a whole boot.”344 than the need for enhanced resources.”350 Community papers are proving to be In her decades at The Michigan Citizen, News. “We’re even more vulnerable. After nearly 30 Teresa Kelly found that the distrust was talking about years, the Michigan Citizen, a weekly that mutual—the media didn’t trust Detroiters, in business, in reported on civil rights, police brutality, either. “The assumption is that media peo- sports, and on and questionable development deals ple know what’s good and that community the city desk from the perspective of the state’s black folks are ‘obstructionists,’ she says. “It’s and features." community, closed in 2014.345 At its height, racism. Pure, simple, unadulterated, un- the paper had a dedicated following and discussed, un-dealt-with racism.”351 What remains, a circulation of 56,000.346 But once ad Investigative journalist Steve Neavling she says, is revenue began to drop, says Teresa Kelly, of Detroit Metro Times believes that “a shoestring, its co-founder and former publisher, much of journalists’ inattention stems compared to “business just wasn’t the same,” and “we from fear. “Reporters have a real anxiety what used to be were always on the edge.” For Kelly, who of going into neighborhoods,” he says. a whole boot.” started the paper with her husband and “They are afraid of Detroiters.” later passed the reins to her daughter, Neavling says that after five years of cov- the paper’s closing was a loss to more ering the city hall beat for the Detroit Free than just her family. “To have a healthy Press, he grew disillusioned. The paper community, you have to have an informed “wanted quick-hit stories,” he says, and community,” she says. “People have to was reluctant to let reporters “dive into know what’s going on, and what’s going real issues that affect Detroiters.” He re- to affect them.”347 calls efforts by editors to include “diverse” The growing local news crisis is exacer- voices that he viewed as disingenuous, bating inequalities that have historically after the fact, and lacking in nuance. They plagued the wider news industry—many of “would have reporters go to places like which are playing out in Detroit. While the barbershops, as though Detroiters only city’s population is more than 80 percent hang out in barbershops and churches,” black, the Detroit Free Press is only 16 Neavling says. “Reporters would go to bar- percent minority-staffed and theDetroit bershops and get a quote and sprinkle it in News is only 17 percent minority-staffed.348 the story as an afterthought, but not use And research suggests that there are mul- the perspective of Detroiters to frame and tiple communities in Detroit that feel their shape the story.”352

LOSING THE NEWS 39 Candice Fortman, a lifelong Detroit res- Given the potentially severe conse- ident and chief of operations at Outlier quences—especially to the health of Media, says that reporters ignore certain young children and pregnant women356— neighborhoods “because they don’t live in the sparse and largely uncritical coverage those communities, they don’t worship in was particularly egregious. There was lit- those communities, and they don’t shop tle, if any, coverage in all of 2013.357 An in those communities.” Not reporting in article published in The Detroit News communities fuels distrust and “makes in March 2014 seems to be one of the their news seem alternative, as though it earliest, offering an uncritical report of is some other place.”353 DWSD’s announcement of the shutoffs Fortman has worked in media for 10 and quoting government officials, without years and spends her days thinking up offering community perspectives.358 Local ways to reach residents who have turned TV news gave the issue some coverage away from traditional news outlets. While in April 2014.359 she says she’s protective of the way peo- At first, says Monica Lewis-Patrick, ple talk about the news industry, she also president of We the People of Detroit, admits that journalists and editors are those protesting the shutoff policy “got quick to dismiss legitimate criticism: “We pushback from the media that we were decide the people who are criticizing us just a few wayward activists who didn’t aren’t important enough to be critical,” she understand what was happening.”360 It was says. “They’re not smart enough. They’re not until Lewis-Patrick and other Detroit not degreed enough. They’re not all these activists turned to the United Nations in things that we place false value on, so we an effort to bring attention to the shut- don’t listen to them. But those are our con- offs,361 when the issue started receiving sumers. Those are the people who are not international attention, that coverage from subscribing to us, who are not becoming established local outlets in Detroit picked members, who aren’t listening to our pod- up.362 The UN issued a statement saying, casts, who aren’t getting our newsletters. “Disconnection of water services because You can’t treat them like others and then of failure to pay due to lack of means ask them to be supporters.”354 constitutes a violation of the human right As Detroit has shifted from bankruptcy to water and other international human to partial recovery, many residents lament rights.”363 Lewis-Patrick recalls: “After the that establishment news media has often UN rapporteurs came, we got a national failed to report critically on and boost for a couple of weeks.”364 perspectives of the city’s poor and its Even then, water activist Sylvia Orduño African-American communities, on issues felt that some local media outlets showed ranging from water shutoffs, to redevelop- more interest in the UN rapporteurs’ visit ment, to the bankruptcy itself. There is a than the policy’s impact. "We wanted me- sense that legacy media has consistently dia to cover the scale and scope of the missed opportunities to expose corruption, shutoffs," she says, "the disproportion- , and unfairness in favor of narratives ate impact on vulnerable populations, that reflect the concerns of the city’s gov- on people of color.”365 ernment, real estate developers, founda- In a city where nearly 38 percent of tions, and other established institutions. residents live below the poverty line,366 where water bills reportedly run almost NE OF THE MOST CONTENTIOUS is- twice average, and where a Osues in recent years has been the bill could eat up more than 10 percent of city’s water shutoffs. In 2013, the Detroit a household’s income,367 few established Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) media outlets considered the issue of wa- began pursuing a strategy of cutting off ter affordability. Every single time that service to collect on overdue payments we wanted to get the media to cover an and, in the spring of 2014, ramped up a issue," Orduño says, "they would only do campaign of mass shutoffs that reportedly it if we would give them the contact of a affected 112,000 Detroit homes between person whose water was shut off so that 2014 and 2018.355 they could go and talk to that family. But

40 PEN AMERICA EBUILDING TRUST WILL TAKE sub- Rstantial effort. In early 2019, the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy released a report, Crisis in Democracy: Renewing Trust in America, that prioritizes diversity and equitable representation as one of its key recom- mendations: “News organizations should adopt recruitment, hiring and retention practices that increase diversity of staff, and even of owners,” the report advises. “Newsrooms should develop mentoring and training programs that can help en- list, retain and promote more women and journalists of color at all levels. And they need to include other underrepresented groups, such as underrepresented geo- graphical and political groups, so that the reporting they produce reflects the entire community.”372 Detroit residents protest water shutoffs. Vincent McCraw, a former break- ing-news digital editor and producer at The Detroit News and current president the thing is it never gets at the root of of the Detroit Chapter of the National the problem. And so we got tired of par- Association of Black Journalists, spent ticipating in this exposure of families.”368 years pleading with editors to hire more Some reporters seemed to adopt the journalists of color. “You have to make the DWSD’s narrative that the water crisis effort,” he says. “I get that because of the was the fault of irresponsible residents. buyouts and the layoffs that resources On a live MSNBC show in July 2014, De- are stretched, but you have to make more troit reporter Hank Winchester of Local of a commitment even in these challeng- 4 WDIV stated, “People simply don’t want ing times.”373 to pay the water bill and would rather The current editor of the Detroit Free spend money on cable.”369 Press, Peter Bhatia, who took over in 2017 Such claims provoked widespread and back in 2009 became the first jour- outrage. “The water struggle in Detroit nalist of South Asian descent to lead a wasn’t really perceived as a water strug- major daily,374 says that he is taking con- gle,” says Tawana Petty, director of data crete measures to address diversity and justice programming for the Detroit Com- inclusion. ”We have a new initiative we’ll munity Technology Project. “It was being be launching later this year,” he says, “sort perceived as a bunch of Detroiters who of a listening tour to try to connect bet- just didn’t want to pay their bills. If a root ter with communities that perhaps has cause analysis was done, then we would slipped some in recent years.375 understand that folks were paying high “Do we satisfy every community?” percentages in water and sewage rates Bhatia continues. “I don’t think that we that were not affordable relative to their probably do. But we’re out there doing take-home income.”370 everything that we can all the time with Distrust in local established media the resources that we have to bring home among communities of color had been the story of Detroit for the people who years in the making, but the lack of critical live here and for the people who care coverage of the water shutoffs caused about Detroit.”376 trust to deteriorate further. In its wake, Orduño says, "we decided we weren’t N THE MEANTIME, smaller outlets are going to bother so much with the local Istepping into the breach. 371

BREAD FOR THE WORLD media anymore.” Launched in 2016, Outlier Media

LOSING THE NEWS 41 value of living where you work. I think that I am much better able to serve my commu- nity as a journalist by being part of it.”380 In 2017 Serena Maria Daniels, recently laid off as a breaking news reporter at The Detroit News, started Tostada Mag- azine, an independent digital publication founded on the premise that food jour- nalism has the power to unify commu- nities and preserve culture. She quickly saw that she was filling a niche. “When I founded Tostada Magazine and started "I wanted writing about Southwest Detroit and to provide about Latino communities,” she says, “the information not response was immediate. People were starved for content that accurately re- about low-income flected the community that wasn’t a story families but about victimization or criminalization.”381 for low-income Residents in downtown Detroit protest Daniels says that Southwest Detroit’s families," says pervasive water shutoffs, which began in sizable Mexican community is largely in- Outlier founder 2013 and continue today. visible to established media outlets. “The Sarah Alvarez. only instances that I ever heard about the Latino community was with regard "Most of the news focuses on issues important to low-in- to immigration stories,” she says. “Maybe that's produced in come families. “I wanted to provide in- the occasional Cinco de Mayo story. But Detroit is actually formation not about low-income families by and large, I don’t see the Latino com- produced for but for low-income families,” says founder munity really being represented in legacy residents who Sarah Alvarez, a former civil rights attor- media.”382 Now in its third year, Tostada live outside of ney turned public radio journalist. “Most has grown enough to allow Daniels to of the news that’s produced in Detroit continuously hire freelance journalists Detroit, suburban is actually produced for residents who of color to write stories about food in news consumers— live outside of Detroit, suburban news their communities. people with more consumers—people with more money to But niche digital-native startups like To- money to spend.” spend.”377 stada and Outlier, both of which operate Outlier used data collected from on micro-budgets, can’t come close to United Way’s 211 helpline to pinpoint solving the systemic, intractable, nation- the information that Detroiters needed wide challenges of local news, as Alvarez most. It identified housing and utilities well knows. “We don’t have the answer as top priorities, then built a database, to the news business’ sustainability prob- accessible from mobile phones, to pro- lem,” she says. “Instead we’re honest vide critical information at the hyperlo- about what we’re hoping to build, and cal level.378 “There are information gaps, we don’t try to raise more money than we and there are also accountability gaps,” know we can use. That means we spend Alvarez says. “Without good information a lot of time very close to being broke, on what should be happening and who is as an organization.”383 Nor does she see supposed to do it, residents don’t have Outlier “as a replacement to legacy me- the ability to hold their public officials dia, but more as an intervention. We accountable.”379 don’t have a ton of resources, this is a One way that Alvarez tries to bridge very difficult industry, so we do the most the information and accountability gaps with our limited resources.”384 But until is through hiring. At Outlier, the entire staff the powers that be can figure out a new is composed of women of color who live business model that doesn’t depend on in Detroit. “You just need to be incredibly vanished advertisers and feckless own- intentional about who you hire,” Alvarez ers, these innovative outlets are working

says, “and you also have to understand the hard to improve the lives of Detroiters. UUSC4ALL

42 PEN AMERICA