There was a bittersweet reality in the wild celebration Monday as Detroit Free Press reporters extraordinaire Jim Schaefer and Mike Elrick won the Pulitzer Prize for bringing to light Kwame Kilpatrick’s misdeeds in the text message scandal…
As the newsroom erupted and champagne flowed, Free Press staffers reported the celebration on their Facebook pages faster than the newsroom collectively reported the news on freep.com. They posted dozens of pictures. They gave blow-by-blow reports of the newsroom speeches.
It was akin to the other recent inside-the-newsroom reports as the Ann Arbor News decided to shutter. Beyond the official, staid, boring, and incomplete corporate reporting on the situation in the Ann Arbor News, former News staffer Jim Carty carried a transcript of the staff meeting on his blog.
Pretty explicit examples of how the Web has eroded newspapers’ near-exclusive local reporting franchise.
If the decline of Michigan journalism worries you, join the crowd. Literally.
On May 11, Michigan State University will host “In Search of a New Journalism” a day-long gathering of journalists, academics, and readers to discuss what grows out of the current creative destruction. Details are still coming together, but preliminary speakers include…
Amber Arellano: Detroit News, writes a weekly Monday online column
John Bebow: Executive Director, The Center for Michigan
Bill Emkow: Editor-in-Chief of MLive.com
Jonathan Morgan (MODERATOR): Multiplatform Editor at the Detroit News
Aaron Olson: MSU journalism student
Clare Ramsey: Managing editor of ModelD
Prof. Joe Walther: Comm MSU, Information Studies & Media
If you’d like to join in, send us an email and we’ll let the organizers know you’re coming.
2 Comments
John, you nailed the bittersweet essence. The other irony was that this reportedly was the first time the Pulitzer folks offered an Internet category. Without comment, no prize was awarded. That sums it up perfectly for now. But someday. In the meantime, let’s be thankful we still have what’s left of the Freep.
John, I have a different perspective. The behaviour that is rewarded is what is reinforced. Instead of reporting and analyzing complex problems in our state and communities, we reward reporting of “bad behaviour”, this is like our fascination with “bad news and failures” and not suceesses, innovation and improvements. This may be a major reason why newspaper reading and major TV news watching goes down year after year. It looks a lot like the story of the auto industry in Michigan.