By Jon Funabiki
From a distance, Detroit’s problems seem all too clear and simple to understand: The street lamps don’t work; houses by the score lay abandoned; and the city is broke. Listen to the people, and you quickly understand that the situation is complicated and that it didn’t sneak up on them.
“Bankruptcy has been going on for 30 years,” said Riet Schumack, one of the founders of Neighbors Building Brightmoor, which has been helping residents start programs to combat blight, drug trafficking and prostitution in her neighborhood. “We have had to become self-sufficient hustlers.”
I was listening to local residents addressing a group of journalists preparing to launch a yearlong campaign to examine the causes, impact and solutions to the financial crises facing not only Detroit, but other cities and agencies in Michigan as well.
I was in Detroit because Renaissance Journalism is playing a critical role in organizing the campaign. It is unique in that nine local news organizations are participating, and they have agreed to collaborate with one another and to share news stories. The Ford Foundation, which has longstanding interests in Michigan, asked Renaissance Journalism to set up the collaboration with a $250,000 grant. In addition, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation also has allocated $250,000 to the news partners in the collaboration.
The news partners are the Center for Michigan, a policy group that publishes the online Bridge Magazine; Detroit Public Radio (WDET); Michigan Public Radio; Detroit Public Television (DPTV); and New Michigan Media, itself a collaboration involving five ethnic newspapers: Arab American News, The Jewish News, The Michigan Citizen (an African American newspaper), the Latino Press and The Michigan Korean Weekly.
The journalists also are launching ambitious community engagement efforts that have the potential to connect with a vast range of communities through the combined reach of printed newspapers, public broadcasting and online publication. The journalists organized the community meeting at TechTown Detroit, a business development incubator, to develop story ideas and community contacts.
We heard a multitude of ideas and perspectives. What we didn’t hear was begging. Quite the opposite. More than one speaker proudly used the word “scrappy” to describe the people here and urged reporters to pay attention to those who are “Detroiters by choice.” Some bemoaned the belief that suburbanites and residents of other cities have “given up” on Detroit or criticized state politicians who oppose help for Detroit as a way to win elections. Others urged journalists to shine some “sunlight” on no-bid contracts executed by bankruptcy and emergency law managers. Others urged journalists to take an in-depth look at race relations, the tensions between new and longtime residents and how immigrants have revitalized some areas—especially Latinos in the city’s southwest sector.
The participants almost uniformly criticized the national news media’s preoccupation with “ruins porn”—images of abandoned and broken-down houses—and “one-size-fits-all” assessments of what’s wrong and what should be done in Michigan. The real story, many said, is at the neighborhood level.
Chastity Pratt, a reporter for Center for Michigan, summed it up best: “We need to ask people what they want.”