Case Study View from Detroit 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 Metro Times, the Little Caesars pizza chain, the De- and Motor City 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 journalist 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 downtown Detroit.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- newspaper 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 Michigan 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 Little Caesars Arena 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 journalists 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 newspapers in North Carolina pers and TV stations—the Detroit Free and found that “local media favor profes- Press, The Detroit News, 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. cities today, Detroit found, “groups that are confrontational, still has multiple media outlets: two major volunteer-led, or advocate on behalf of daily newspapers (the Detroit Free Press 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 Michigan Chronicle), 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- Southeast Michigan launched the De- nounced that it would acquire Gannett, 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.