Time blogger to watch: Darrell Dawsey

[RealityCheck]

Assume many of you will keep an eye on The Detroit Blog, aka 'One year. One city. Endless opportunities.'

We'll surely have post-a-rama opportunities to praise, deride, satirize and correct the river of words running through it until next September. As Week One unfolds with 11 posts so far, I'm jazzed to see Darrell Dawsey as a contributor.

He's a vet [[survivor?) of the LA Times, Philly Inquirer and our News, as well as a twice-published author. The mag touts him as "a respected . . . commentator on urban life and culture," which we can judge in coming weeks and months. [[Yes, Time will tell )

Based on a newsroom acquaintanceship, readers are in for a ride. Before Em was a new voice or LeDuff came home, Darrell was a fresh, insightful, stylish writer in Detroit. As a young features section reporter in the late '80s [[maybe early '90s), he got editors at The News to open a relatively free range space for an innovative, streetwise, slang-enriched stream of consciousness column called Buckwhylin'

[[v.) Being buckwild, as defined by Busta Rhymes. Being rather out of control in an irrational manner -- possibly drunk and/or on drugs. "Straight buckwhylin' in the place to be." "I'll be buckwhylin' in a minute."
-- Urban Dictionary

Darrell's straight, sober version of Buckwhylin' lasted barely half a year, as I recall, but in that time he introduced a perspective and language rare in dailies then.

Now about 41, he's a freelance writer, husband and father living in the Chandler Park area.

He's also ready to "serve it straight up" at detroit.blogs.time.com

Detroit – at least the city proper, which birthed and reared me – doesn't usually go well with Big Media. The mixture can too often be a nasty brew of sensationalism and too-easy narratives, lazily or hastily sketched caricatures of an America in decline.

. . . But now, I've been asked to help tend bar.

And because I love this town – what we used to be, what we are, what we strive to become — I'm going to try my hand at it. So welcome to my blog.

I can't promise my special house blends will always go down smooth. But I'll do my best to add it all in, and that includes ingredients – voices, people, places from every quarter of this town – that don't always abound in the admixtures major media serves up.

Detroit is still a beautiful, diverse and magical place. . . . But Detroit is also a troubled city, a place where race and class divide, families struggle, industries crumble and bureaucrats steal. I know this, too – and so there will be days when there ain't much sweet.

His RSS feed is on my reader. .

[vetalalumni]

Now added to my favorites. Thanks.