Originally Posted by
Bad Brains
Neavling, do you proof-read your articles before you post them? Where do you get some of your information? Let's analyze your recent Packard scrapping article:
"It was just another lawless day at the sprawling ruins of the Packard Plant in Detroit, where scrappers have become alarmingly more daring and audacious as police have virtually ignored an organized scrapping operation that has sprung up."
Sprung up? Where have you been the past decade or so?
"Scrappers are beginning to tear down large commercial buildings with backhoes, cutting steel beams with loud, high-powered saws and hauling heaps of recyclable metal in overflowing pickup trucks to nearby scrapyards."
Beginning? Again, where have you been? [[Also, these are industrial buildings, not commercial.)
Yes, industrial equipment is loud, you don't need to point that out.
"The Motor City Muckraker spent the past four months monitoring and interviewing the illegal operation as scrappers demolished parts of the asbestos-laden plant on the east side"
Umm, what?
"On a recent afternoon, Robert Walker, a former Detroit cop, casually packed his pickup truck with scrap metals that had fallen to the ground after a brazen backhoe operator razed the midsection of an industrial building a day earlier.
“Today we are in an economic crisis, and people are resorting to scrapping,” Walker told me. “I’m sure the police are getting some direct orders not to bother us. We’re just regular citizens trying to get by."
Why do I have a feeling he didn't really say this? [[Maybe he did, who knows....?)
Now they are industrial buildings? Just above you said they were commercial?
"Controversial Packard owner Dominic Cristini said he’s tired of the city looking the other way as people destroy the plant. He said police have ignored his complaints about arsons and scrapping.
“What’s the sense of having laws if you don’t enforce them?” asked Cristini, who owes about $750,00o in delinquent taxes. “Police do nothing. I’m sick of it.”
While you just admitted you spent the last 4 months trespassing on his property?
You used the letter "o" as the last digit of your money figure. Typos happen, just pointing it out.
"The top brass at the Detroit Police Department said they were unaware of the scrapping until contacted by the Motor City Muckraker on Monday. Within a half hour of the call, a Detroit cop arrived at the Packard and ticketed a pair of scrappers."
Did you seriously say the police had no idea there was scrapping going on until YOU brought it to their attention, and then within a half-hour of YOUR call started issuing tickets? Sorry, but no.
Didn't you just say the owner himself has called the police over the scrapping taking place?
"Within a few hours of the tickets, a lone man in a white pickup stopped at the Packard and fished metal scraps from the bottom of a recently leveled building to trade his findings for cash at a nearby scrapyard."
You mean scrappers take their metal to a scrapyard for cash? How long did it take you to investigate this fact?
"Long before the Packard became a haven for scrappers and adventurers, workers churned out luxury cars in one of the world’s largest manufacturing plants from 1903 to 1956. Famed architect Albert Kahn designed the concrete complex, which would eventually include dozens of buildings and 3.5-million square feet of industrial space."
All common knowledge. Is there a reason why this blurb randomly appears in this article?
"Smaller shops replaced the Packard in the 1950s, but tenants slowly disappeared, leaving the plant virtually empty and open to trespass."
FALSE. As discussed in this thread, remaining tenants were forced out by the city in the late 90's. They didn't "slowly disappear".
"Interestingly, since the backhoe arrived two months ago, the Packard has not been on fire. But between July and August, the Packard was on fire 24 different days – all suspected arsons. Soon after flames loosened and broke up the concrete, scrappers removed metal from the rubble."
FALSE. There have been fires there on a regular basis as usual. On any given day there is probably a fire somewhere inside.
Yes, scrappers remove metal from rubble piles. That's why they set the fires.
"The fires were so frequent this summer that the fire department let the blazes burn unattended."
The fire department has been letting the fires burn long before last summer. Again I must ask, where have you been?
"At night, the backhoe was left at the plant or parked across the street in an abandoned lot in plain sight"
4 sentences later
"At night, the backhoe rests in a nearby vacant lot."
"To cut up larger chunks of metal, some scrappers used powerful saws."
Yes, you also mentioned this at the beginning of the article.
I did this for constructive criticism purposes, so some of you need to relax.
I'm glad you're doing what you like, but you really need to take a look at the finished product. This is TERRIBLE work, especially from someone who was an alleged City Hall reporter for the Free Press. It appears as if you are just making things up and throwing whatever you can together in an attempt to form a coherent story.
To be honest, I question whether or not you really did interview Dominic Cristini [[or any of the people in the articles). If you did score an interview, the article linked in this thread doesn't really give us much of anything. You need to find an editor.