Maynard Institute archives

The Worst-Reported Stories About Detroit

by richard0505

Renewal Underway, and Whites Get All the Credit

. . . Perceptions Aren’t All About Race, but . . .

On 9/11, Arab American Says Things “Seem to Be Getting Worse”

Short Takes


The Toronto Star made this video in December to accompany a story about longtime Detroiters helping to revitalize their city. News reports neglect such residents in favor of stories about white newcomers, panelists said Saturday at a Detroit conference organized by Unity: Journalists for Diversity.

Renewal Underway and Whites Get All the Credit

A panel of practiced Detroit observers of color had no trouble responding to a charge from moderator Alicia Nails, director of Wayne State University’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity:

“We will begin with a one-minute opening statement from each of you about a specific example of reporting on the ‘new Detroit/ers’ that fails to take into account the contributions of old Detroit/ers and/or the human cost of the ‘new,’ ” Nails said Saturday at the Regional Media Summit of Unity: Journalists for Diversity, held in Detroit.

Louis Aguilar, a business reporter for the Detroit News whose family has been in the city since 1929, nominated a Detroit News blog piece by Chad Rochkind. Rochkind is a white Detroiter who began his contribution, “Two weeks ago today, under the banner of the People First Project, I led a group of volunteers to reclaim the parking space in front of Astro Coffee on Michigan Avenue and transform it into a public space. The parklet was an immediate hit and instantly beloved by the community. . . .”

Say what? Who is “the community?” Aguilar asked. In the 2010 U.S. Census, Detroit was 82.7 percent black. The photo accompanying Rochkind’s blog piece showed nearly everyone to be white.

Darrell Dawsey, who has worked at several Detroit media outlets and is now communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union-Michigan, held out a New York Times travel piece from 2014. “A Gleam of Renewal in Struggling Detroit,” about the Corktown neighborhood, showed “no black people.” It was another in which, Dawsey said, “white people were being cast as saviors of the city of Detroit.”

At the time, protests over “A Gleam of Renewal” reached Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, who contacted Monica Drake, who is African American and the Times travel editor.

“Ms. Drake told me that she never wants to force diversity into stories — ‘I don’t believe in checking boxes‘ — but that she does acknowledge the problem with this article,” Sullivan wrote.

The public editor continued, “She said that she would address it at a staff meeting, but that she planned to do so with a light touch. ‘I don’t see the need for a public flogging.’ “

Dawsey also nominated a Detroit Free Press story about a white University of Michigan student who is growing shrimp in a vacant Detroit home.

“Great idea,” Dawsey said, but in 2004, when Claud Anderson, a black economist who is also a fish farmer, proposed a black business district downtown to be called “African Town,” the idea was denounced by the Free Press. Even some blacks called the idea racist. 

The other panelists took their turns, and a theme was emerging: the “savior” narrative Dawsey had articulated.

The event was the second such “regional media summit” of a revamped Unity: Journalists for Diversity, which now comprises the Asian American Journalists Association, the Native American Journalists Association and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.

After the pullouts of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the coalition scrapped the joint convention it held every four years in favor of smaller regional meetings in places that are having news “challenges,” in the words of Unity President Russell Contreras.

The first such session was held in May at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and the next, “Empowering the Southern Narrative,” is scheduled for Oct. 16 at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to discuss media literacy, social media, entrepreneurial journalism, poverty and coverage of the civil rights movement. Attendance in Detroit varied between 72 and a little more than 80 people.

Luther Keith, a former Detroit News editor who worked at the paper for 30 years, left 10 years ago to start Arise Detroit, which describes itself as a broad-based coalition of community groups.

Keith told Saturday’s Wayne State audience, “We were in Detroit before Detroit was cool.” The Arise website elaborates: “Our mission is to launch a new wave of volunteerism for the many [worthwhile] programs and activities that are struggling with the issues that trouble our community . . .”

However, Keith said, “Somehow the people in the neighborhoods don’t get enough credit for the work they do.” On Aug. 1, Arise Detroit staged its ninth annual Neighborhoods Day, with more than 250 community organizations pitching in to clean up the city. No other city has such an event, Keith said.

Nine days earlier, the Detroit Free Press wrote — inside the paper — about the record level of participation, but the Detroit News ran an Associated Press story in advance of the event, Keith said. “The only time we’ve been on the front pages is when outsiders are telling their story, but nothing about the black folks they were working with.”

Kim Trent, a lifelong Michigan resident, former Detroit News city hall reporter and a member of the Wayne State University Board of Governors, nominated a 2010 NBC News “Dateline” piece that showed Detroiters reduced to eating coon meat, and chef Anthony Bourdain’s season-finale of CNN’s “Parts Unknown” in 2013.

The former prompted protests to NBC; Trent said she had never heard of the man depicted selling coon meat. Regarding the latter, Trent read the response she posted on Facebook.

“If I lived somewhere else in America and watched Anthony Bourdain’s show about Detroit last night I would think folks are insane for living here. He literally did not show ONE neighborhood where blight doesn’t rule the day. I get that stark visual images are sexy to national media outlets and I’m not delusional about the fact that many of the city’s neighborhoods are in horrible shape.

“But do you really think 700,000 people would live in a city where the only neighborhood choices are: 1. Blighted urban prairies or 2.Hipster strongholds? . . .”

Trent told the audience, “What’s new and exciting is what’s always been there. The blight is shocking to me, too, but that’s not the whole Detroit experience.”

Louis Aguilar, a Detroit News reporter, is flanked by journalists Darrell Dawsey and Vickie Thomas at Saturday’s panel discussion.

. . . Perceptions Aren’t All About Race, but . . .

It isn’t all about race, but a large amount of it is.

At a luncheon at the Wayne State University Student Center, Walter Middlebrook, an assistant managing editor at the Detroit News and a black journalist, asked a question of Bankole Thompson, a longtime Detroit watcher who was recently named a Detroit News columnist and was the day’s keynote speaker.

“Is Detroit ever going to deal with its racial issue?”

“No,” Thompson responded. It makes people too uncomfortable.

While the panelists discussing “Reporting Beyond the Narrative: Covering the New Detroit/ers as if it’s all New and all Good” could fill in a narrative of whites as the only ones who are “saving” Detroit, they could also name pieces that got it right.

These included an August NPR story, “Who Fixes Detroit? Young Black Detroiters Want To Resurrect A Lost Neighborhood” by Kinsey Clarke; “Surprising — no, astonishing — Detroit revival taking root” from January by David Olive in the Toronto Star; “An Insider’s Guide to Detroit” by Tracie McMillan in the Wall Street Journal in June; and columns by Nolan Finley, the white, conservative editorial page editor of the Detroit News, who asserted in March, to the surprise of some, “Black input lacking in Detroit’s revival.” He followed up on this theme in other columns.

Steve Neavling, a white journalist who writes for Motor City Muckraker, was also praised. “He’s in the community. He’s embedded,” Darrell Dawsey said.

However, Kim Trent declared, “People have a case of race fatigue. We don’t want to talk about racism fatigue.” In reporting on racial issues, “Let’s have the context. Let’s talk about Jim Crow, economic disparities, efforts to eliminate black entrepreneurship.”

Vickie Thomas, City Beat reporter for WWJ-AM Newsradio and a board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, said she started her journalism career covering Mayor Coleman A. Young, who in 1974 became the city’s first African American mayor. He “wanted to make sure that African Americans had a piece of the pie.”

Now, she said, after the near-collapse of the auto industry, a disgraced mayor sentenced to more than two decades in prison and a slide of the city into a since-resolved bankruptcy, the city operates under a narrative that says “the black mayors have failed you. It’s time for a white leader.”

Edward “Mike” Duggan, a white lawyer who took office as mayor last year, has appointed white press aides to frame the stories for the news media. No one is calling him on that, Trent said. “People might want to ask that question.”

The need for more race consciousness extends to the newsroom, the panelists said.

“We know instinctively that people hire folks like themselves,” Luther Keith said. In newsrooms, “Put some black folks in charge. They’re going to find some black folks.”

In the latest newsroom diversity census from the American Society of News Editors, the Detroit Free Press reported 24 percent journalists of color, including its Pulitzer Prize winning editorial page editor, Stephen Henderson. The Detroit News did not report its figures for 2015, but recorded 27.1 percent journalists of color in 2014, its black journalists including two assistant managing editors, Middlebrook for Metro and Felecia Henderson for features.

Ten years ago, the Free Press reported 29.2 percent journalists of color and the Detroit News, 26.2. Panelists cited the “glory days” at the News when the late Chauncey Bailey was a staff writer and columnist (1979-92), Angelo Henderson was a business writer and columnist (1989-95), Elizabeth Atkins covered race relations (1991-95) and Keith created On Detroit, a weekly grass-roots mini-newspaper that ran from 1993 to 2003.

Dawsey added that the role of black journalists is key. “I am not an ambassador from the media to the community,” he said. It’s the other way around. In conversations about the degree of community sensitivity to black crime, for example, “I can show you the names on the T-shirts” of black youths who have died. “I can show you the funeral directors who drive caravans up and down the street to show black people this is your future” if the violence continues.

“The biggest problem I have is the Detroit media has no institutional memory,” continued Dawsey, whose family arrived in Detroit in the 1930s.

Thomas recalled that when City Councilwoman Brenda Scott died in 2002, a producer at her station suggested, “Let’s call Coleman Young,” who had died in 1997.

Technology now makes it possible for longtime community residents to tell the stories of their own neighborhoods, and Dawsey recommended training them in how to do that.

Eric Ortiz, a former editor at ESPN.com who held a 2013-14 John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and emerged as CEO of a Storify-like company called Evrybit, told Journal-isms afterward that he wanted to work with Detroit community leaders to do just that.

“We will work with Detroit community leaders/journalists to organize workshops with community members around Detroit and students at local universities like Wayne State,” Ortiz, who participated in the conference, wrote Monday by email.

“The workshops will teach community members and students how to use Evrybit to tell multimedia stories on smartphones and teach the fundamentals of storytelling and journalism (ethics, accuracy, reporting tools, etc.). We also will show community members how to distribute stories on their own websites and social channels and look to establish partnerships with traditional and nontraditional media organizations to amplify distribution and awareness. . . .

“Our mission is to make everyone’s voice heard and create a new profit model for media. I think Detroit is an ideal place to continue the work. Reinventing the city while providing a new model for local news and media would be a great story. . . .”

For journalists of color, Dawsey said, most important is the need to maintain their integrity. “You can be bought off if you’re not careful.”

Skin color isn’t the only criterion for winning her approval, Trent said. She cited CNN anchor Don Lemon as the kind of black journalist she could not support. “It’s clear that he’s there as a representative of black respectability politics,” she said, a term defined by black writer Aurin Squire as “African-Americans’ self-policing morality and propriety in order to better reflect themselves to the white mainstream.”

Ideological differences aside, one thing is supremely important for journalists, according to Keith: “Be damned good at your craft.”

From left: Dawud Walid of the Council on American Islamic Relations, Russell Contreras of Unity, cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, Osama A. Siblani of the Arab American News, Joe Grimm of Michigan State University, Margaret Holt of Unity, Fatina Abdrabboh of the American Anti-Discrimination Committee and Isra M. El-beshir of the Arab American National Museum. (Credit: Twitter)

On 9/11, Arab American Says Things “Seem to Be Getting Worse”

“Things aren’t getting any better,” Fatina Abdrabboh, director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan said on Friday, the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “They seem to be getting worse.”

Abdrabboh was speaking at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich., at the regional media conference of Unity: Journalists for Diversity.

She talked about a third-grader who was called an ISIS terrorist every day for nine months. Those who complained were told “kids will be kids,” she said.

Abdrabboh was speaking a day after the City Planning Commission of Sterling Heights, a Detroit suburb, rejected plans for a proposed multimillion-dollar mosque “as hundreds of residents packed inside and outside of City Hall in opposition to the center,” as Samer Hijazi reported for the Arab American News.

Hijazi also wrote, “Outside of City Hall, tensions flared between Chaldean residents and local Muslims, some of whom showed up to counter-protest the opposition.” The Chaldeans are Iraqi Christians who fled their country after the U.S. invasion meant they lost the protection of Saddam Hussein. The issue is “pitting people of color against people of color,” Abdrabboh said.

Moreover, last month the Detroit News reported, “An airplane linked to an FBI surveillance program that tracks alleged terrorists, spies and criminals has flown at least seven times over Metro Detroit, including two lengthy flights over the Dearborn area last weekend, according to public records.”

The report hit a nerve, as Osama A. Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, told the group. “We are targeted daily in the media. Terrorists sell. We are terrorists. We are killers.” The mention of Dearborn, with its concentration of Arab Americans, confirmed for many that Arab Americans are secret terrorists, it was feared.

Siblani and other Arab American leaders met Aug. 5 with federal officials and then, on Aug. 11, with Detroit News Publisher Jonathan Wolman and the paper’s managing editor, Gary Miles.

By then, the News had reported, “The head of the FBI in Detroit, following the report in The News, said the agency is not investigating terror threats nor targeting communities. “

Miles characterized the meeting as a “refamiliarity session.” He acknowledged to Journal-isms by telephone on Monday that “the Arab American community was quite upset about the implications” of the FBI plane circling over Dearborn but said the News stood by its reporting. Miles said that if the FBI had responded with more specificity before the piece appeared, the News would have included those comments.

Siblani and others also complained about the pro-Israeli bias of the American news media, saying journalists have been fired for pro-Palestinian statements but rewarded for pro-Israeli ones.

The problem is compounded by the low numbers of Arab American journalists.

Miles told Journal-isms that the News had at least two Arab Americans. “It’s fair to say we would all be better served by diverse viewpoints,” the more the better, he said.

“In his upcoming October cover story, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families,” reads a promotional announcement on the Atlantic magazine website. ” ‘There’s a long history in this country of dealing with problems in the African American community through the criminal justice system,’ he says in this animated interview. ‘The enduring view of African Americans in this country is as a race of people who are prone to criminality.’ You can read the full story on September 15, 2015.” (video)

Short Takes

  • The Pittsburgh Black Media Federation Monday denounced as “a blight on journalism” a Sunday column by Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that included the line, “Slavery was horrible, but no black American living today has suffered from it. Most are better off than if their ancestors had remained in Africa.” Tom Waseleski, editorial page editor, emailed Journal-isms, “His views are conservative and contribute to the diversity of opinion featured in our newspaper. We have liberal columnists, too, who, like Jack, are provocative and can stir up reaction by readers. Obviously, readers need to keep in mind that our signed columnists, liberal or conservative, speak for themselves and their own views — not for the Post-Gazette. The views of the newspaper, of course, are expressed in its daily editorials.” Tory N. Parrish, president of the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, responded, “The words ‘conservative’ and ‘racist’ are not synonymous.”
  • “Ahead of the September 16th Republican Debate on CNN, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Define American call on the network to modernize and improve the accuracy of its editorial guidelines and discontinue the use of the word ‘illegal’ when referring to undocumented immigrants,” NAHJ announced on Monday.
  • “On Monday, the [Ferguson, Mo.] commission released the results of its work, a 203-page report ‘Forward through Ferguson, a Path toward Racial Equity,’ the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board wrote on Monday. “It is everything we hoped it would be. By itself, it won’t solve any problems. But from now on, the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored. But the commission buried the lede, as we say in the newspaper business. On page 67 comes this recommendation: ‘Intentionally apply a racial equity framework to existing and new regional policies, initiatives, programs and projects in order to address and eliminate existing disparities for racial and ethnic populations.’ . . .In other words, every time a public policy decision is made that has regional implications, racial equity should be part of the discussion. . . .” Separately, Editor Gilbert Bailon announced that Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger was becoming a Metro columnist.
  • “NPR is projecting to end fiscal year 2015 with a $1.5 million surplus following a two-year effort to reach a break-even budget,” Ben Mook reported Friday for Current.org. The prospect of deficit of $6.1 million in 2014 led NPR to cancel the multicultural “Tell Me More” hosted by Michel Martin.

  • After nearly 26 years, Angela Tuck is retiring from the Atlanta Journal Constitution effective Sept. 25. “I’ve been blessed to work in many roles over nearly 26 years at the ajc: writer, editor, recruiter/intern coordinator and public editor/ columnist. I’m most proud of my work in diversifying the ajc newsroom as well as mentoring dozens of interns and young professionals,” Tuck said in a message to Journal-isms.
  • PBS announced plans Monday to broadcast “America After Charleston,” “a one-hour town hall meeting that aims to explore the many issues propelled into public discourse after a white gunman shot and killed nine African-American parishioners in Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. Gwen Ifill, PBS NEWSHOUR co-anchor and managing editor, and moderator and managing editor of WASHINGTON WEEK, will moderate the special broadcast.” Meanwhile, Ifill has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the Fourth Estate Award, the National Press Club announced. Ifill is to receive the award at a gala dinner on Oct. 15.
  • Services for Allegra B. Bennett, a journalist who became a self-help writer and appeared on home improvement television spots as the “renovating woman,” will be private, Jacques Kelly reported Friday in an obituary for the Baltimore Sun. Bennett, 68, died of breast cancer Sept. 8. However, “A gathering will be held from 4 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Forest Park Golf Course Club House, West Forest Park Avenue” in Baltimore. 
  • In a front-page story for Sunday’s New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters wrote, “To listen to the way some Republicans tell it, America is a pretty awful place these days.” Peters said, “Their damning assessments — that the country is diminished and unrecognizable, imperiled by forces foreign and domestic — seem to resonate with voters already feeling angry, alienated and under threat. . . .” Peters’ piece, searching for reasons for this phenomenon, never mentioned the changing racial complexion of the country and the related anxieties by members of the white majority. No African Americans were quoted. Nor did Peters respond to requests from Journal-isms for comment.
  • “The New York Times announced on Monday that it would sponsor a fellowship in honor of David Carr, the media columnist and reporter who died this year,” Ravi Somaiya reported Monday for the Times. “The David Carr Fellow, The Times said, will spend two years in the Times newsroom ‘covering the intersection of technology, media and culture.’ It is an opportunity, The Times said, ‘for a journalist early in his or her career to build upon Mr. Carr’s commitment to holding power accountable and telling engaging, deeply reported stories. . . .”
  • Journalist Soledad O’Brien Monday unveiled “I Am Latino in America,” “a national tour of conversations that amplify the Latino voice on critical community issues. The Tour kicks off September 28 at Florida International University [in Miami], with plans to roll out in five more cities including Edinburg, TX and Los Angeles, CA. Additional tours are planned for the spring and summer of 2016, with more than 15 cities expected to host the live event,” an announcement said. More information on the tour’s website. 
  • “Programs by and about Latinos were honored at the Imagen Awards,” Henry Schneider reported Monday for Current.org. “America by the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, a documentary series that examines how changing demographics are affecting the U.S., won best national informational program for its episode ‘The New Mad Men.’ ABTN is produced by The Futuro Media Group in association with PBS and presented by WGBH. . . . Also honored at the Imagen Awards was Thirteen/WNET for Oh Noah!, which won for best web series (comedy). Oh Noah! follows the adventures of a young boy and teaches kids Spanish words through accompanying games and videos. . . .”
  • “Colin Cowherd’s move to FS1 is reaping plenty of benefits for the ESPN talent that remained behind,“ Glenn Erby reported Saturday for blackspportsonline.com. “After word that Dan LeBatard would replace Cowherd’s midday spot, SI is reporting that Bomani Jones will move up two hours, to the 4-7 pm slot on ESPN radio. . . . It’s another upward move for Jones who continues to climb the ladder at ESPN, while utilizing his various skills on several ESPN platforms. . . .”
  • “A Colombian journalist was shot dead on Thursday in front of the radio station where she worked, according to news reports,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Friday. “Flor Alba Núñez Vargas had received threats in connection with her reporting, a local journalist told the Committee to Protect Journalists. . . .”
  • Ali Lmrabet, 55, “is back doing journalism in Morocco now for the first time since 2005, when a court found him guilty of defamation, barred him from practicing his profession, and fined him $5,000,” Sam Kimball reported Friday for Columbia Journalism Review. “In an interview earlier that year with the editors of a Moroccan weekly newspaper, Al Moustakil, Lmrabet had declared that Western Saharans who have been living in camps in neighboring Algeria since Moroccan forces invaded their country are refugees. While there is no law against making such comments, Lmrabet’s words drew a lawsuit from Ahmed Khar, the spokesman for a pro-Moroccan NGO, who said that Lmrabet’s words caused him great pain. Khar’s civil suit was filed only a week after Lmrabet applied for government approval to reopen his newspaper, Demain, known for its unfavorable stance towards the Moroccan monarchy. While the 10-year ban on practicing journalism was the most significant imposed on a Moroccan journalist for defamation at the time, others have since faced even heavier fines. . . .”

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