Politics

Stamm: Detroit's Newsy Website, 'The Neighborhoods,' Is Far from Propaganda

September 28, 2017, 4:52 PM by  Alan Stamm

If you haven't checked out The Neighborhoods, you miss strong feature articles about Detroit that typically aren't reported elsewhere.

It's an innovative experiment by city government, and it isn't propaganda. Distrust anyone claiming otherwise.

"Chief storyteller" Aaron Foley and his five-person team deliver compelling, well-crafted profiles and news features that are journalistic in style. They generate 31 posts since launching four weeks ago -- an impressive pace.

The most daring coverage so far, as well as the newsiest, went up Thursday morning.

Foley shares a nine-paragraph summary of a new GQ magazine article headlined "How One Style of Sunglasses Became a Symbol of Status and Violence in Detroit." The city communications staffer says the "very well-written story examines a touchy subject sadly familiar to all of us here" -- street thefts and store grabs of Cartier glasses that cost $2,000 and up. 

You read that right -- a mayoral appointee at a city website writes about "Connecting the dots between Carties, Detroit and violence," as his headline says. Foley calls it "a must-read story" -- although GQ yanked it offline abruptly ("for portraying a major advertiser in a poor light," a Redditor claims without explanation). Even a cached link now is disabled. 

Earlier, the Detroit government site posted its own four-minute video about "getting your buffs snatched off your face."

Other content at the month-old portal is less flashy, but also distinctive and attention-worthy. Kinsey Clarke's post Tuesday about a year-old business at Dexter and Elmhurst asks "the hard question about being a white-owned coffeeshop in one of the blackest areas of the city," Foley says with a social media link.

Dorothy Hernandez, Clarke and their boss also report on nightlife pop-upsBanglatown cricket matches, a midnight boxing program, the RollerCade rink in the Boynton area and a kids' TUF program for The Underage Feminist. Posts are accompanied by stylish photos from Cyrus Tetteh and videos by Jeremy Brockman and Zachary Cunningham, also shown at the city's Comcast cable Channel 21.

Except for the two eyewear theft posts, the articles, podcasts and videos cast Detroit in a positive light. The Neighborhoods isn't about investigative exposés, but its content is true and often unreported elsewhere. With local roots and a street-level perspective, the young online crew finds people, places and events not on most local journalists' radar.

Even on a government payroll, Foley applies the reflexes of a 13-year newsman with a journalism degree from Michigan State ('07).   

"One of the things the mayor said from Day One was  . . . 'We don't want Aaron to lose his voice,'" the appointee tells Georgea Kovanis of the Detroit Free Press last month.

Similarly, in a Michigan Chronicle interview with Alisha Dixon early this year, he says: 

"You use all of the same things you were doing on the journalism side to go out into the community and tell what’s going on. . . . There's a lot that’s going on, but that just does not get the same attention as Dan Gilbert, that does not get the same attention as Ilitch and the stadium and arena.

"And that’s not to say it's not important because it is. . . . A church going through a revitalization, the people that keep the parks up, or the people that play in the parks — those are, that’s the part of Detroit that I know. That’s the part I want to share."

The minister of information chief storyteller expands on that theme of two Detroits (not a phrase he uses) in a summer conversation with "Marketplace" on American Public Media:

"One of the bigger things that happened in the last couple of years is that we saw a lot of media coverage about the typically young, white 20-something millennial moving to Detroit and saying sort of these offhand things about Detroit is a blank canvas, Detroit is a blank slate.

"And lots of attention is given to the budding entrepreneur who 'takes a risk' on Detroit. But again, you have mostly people of color, immigrant stories, that are being ignored."

Take a look and decide the value for yourself. We feel The Neighborhoods is worth bookmarking and following on Twitter or Facebook.

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The most recent posts at the site's index of 31 articles posted since Aug. 29

 



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