Renaissance

Newsweek's Odd Detroit Guide Makes the Magazine More Like Newsweak

August 28, 2016, 7:45 PM by  Alan Stamm

Now it's the same old song
And Newsweek's turn to get it wrong

After years of national media clichés about Detroit's murder rate, food deserts and factory ruins, a new wave of visit Detroit travel features should be a welcome change.

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But the sweet shift leaves a bitter aftertaste when a quick-hit roundup is uninformed, oddly focused and flat-out wrong about an iconic dish.

The latest entry in this genre that's popular among distant editors appears in Newsweek, where David Weiss -- a long-ago suburban Detroiter -- writes this in a paragraph on "working-class grub:"

Loui’s Pizza is the best square-shaped, thick-crusted pie in the city, though a chain called Buddy’s is making major bank with a generic version. 

We're OK with pinning a "best" medal for Loui's, but choke on his howler that the pioneering pies baked by Buddy's for 70 years are "a generic version."     

Never mind what we think -- let's go to the source: "In 1944, August 'Gus' Guerra turned the blind pig [at Conant and Six Mile] into a legitimate tavern," a company history says at Buddy's site. "In 1946, Sicilian style pizza was added to the menu. Soon the neighbors, and out-of-towners, were becoming hooked on Buddy's unique recipe. The legend of Detroit's Original Square Pizza was born."

Weiss doesn't sound like "a Detroit native," as his piece's headline claims. Look what he confesses (bold added):

I grew up there when it was the nation’s fifth most populous city, when no true American drove a Datsun nor a Daimler, when a suburban softie like myself could take a bus downtown to a Tigers game and never think twice about being shaken down.

That's supposed to be a compliment for Old Detroit, we think.

As you may sense, over-the-top writing is part of the gag factor here. Need confirmation?

Detroit took a proper licking and almost stopped ticking, but then it miraculously sprang to life some five years ago as digitally correct millennials noticed lofts the size of football fields selling at a dime on a New York dollar and migrated to the City Formerly Known as Murder.

We can't even. So we'll turn to a writer who never was a suburban softie and who wrote a 2015 book about Detroit.

"The tone-deafness of this one is astounding," Aaron Foley posts on Facebook. He elaborates at BLAC Detroit, the monthly magazine where he's editor:

it’s bad. Really bad. So bad, it’s not inclusive, city-focused or accurate. . . .

Google told me that Weiss also goes by David Was and co-founded Was (Not Was) with Don Fagenson (or Don Was). . . . The band’s origin story, however points to . . . Oak Park. 

Foley is understandably repelled by four "where to play" suggestions from Weiss, who recommends the MGM Grand or golf in Bloomfield Hills, Clarkston and Ann Arbor because "nobody in their right brain thinks Detroit when it comes to outdoor pursuits."

Nuh-uh, notes Foley:

Actually, you could go kayaking on the numerous river tours of Detroit, bike along the Dequindre Cut or the Riverwalk, jog along the trails at Rouge Park. 

Among 13 negative comments at Newsweek's site is one from local broadcaster Travis Wright, host and producer of WDET's "Culture City" program," who says the magazine should "cancel this dude's check. He just insulted the phrase 'phoning it in.' Also, please tell me this David Weiss isn't Dave Was. That'd be a swift kick to the shin."    

At Eater Deteroit, editor Brenna Houck, derides the article as "a really poorly edited guide of what to do in Detroit . . . [that] claims to be written by a 'native.' ... WTF?”

But hey, on the plus side: Wilson says nothing about snapping photos at Michigan Central Station or the Packard Plant.

[Writer's note: We join the chorus a few days late after returning from vacation. It's August, after all.


Read more:  Newsweek


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