Does the local media have an agenda or are they just stupid

**jt1** · July-02-10, 04:06 PM

http://www.freep.com/article/2010070...015/1001/rss01
The article opens with: "Southfield police officers fatally shot a 34-year-old Detroit man"

Later in the article it states: "When officers tried to arrest him at the apartment complex where he lives in Novi, he fled"

So wouldn't he be a Novi man?

**detroitbob** · July-02-10, 04:17 PM

well, he may have lived [[or 'staying') at the address in Novi, but if his ID [[read State ID or DL) was issued to a Detroit address he is considered a Detroit resident for documentation purposes. So, it's not where you 'stay' its where your are 'legally resident'.

**jt1** · July-02-10, 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by detroitbob

well, he may have lived [[or 'staying') at the address in Novi, but if his ID [[read State ID or DL) was issued to a Detroit address he is considered a Detroit resident for documentation purposes. So, it's not where you 'stay' its where your are 'legally resident'.

Point taken. Is this the standard in reporting? I have never seen an article that framed out a difference between residence on DL and where someone was staying.

Bearinabox · July-02-10, 04:25 PM

My guess is that they laid off one editor too many.

**fryar** · July-02-10, 04:29 PM

I don't know. I'll grant that that's a gaffe. But that article from the other day about Detroit "finally" getting a grocery story for one can hardly be described as having an agenda consistent with the discrepancy in that article. I don't think there's too much there.

**ejames01** · July-02-10, 04:42 PM

"Detroit man" = "Black man"

**detroitbob** · July-02-10, 04:49 PM

Well, there is this wonderful book called the "A. P. STYLEBOOK", which USED TO BE
the holy bible for all journalism students while studying and the definitive guide 'for how to' for professional journalists. I recently asked a dear friend who is still in the newspaper business, after seeing errors in both grammer and construcrion, "Doesn't anyone use the stylebook anymore? Her reply cannot be printed here, suffice just to to say, it was a frustrated NO!

**iheartthed** · July-02-10, 05:07 PM

How else are they supposed to unnecessarily identify race without getting sued and boycotted?

**Detroit Stylin** · July-02-10, 06:31 PM

[QUOTE=iheartthed;160303]How else are they supposed to unnecessarily identify race without getting sued and boycotted?[/QU EXACTLY!

**Jimaz** · July-02-10, 06:38 PM

Originally Posted by jt1

Point taken. Is this the standard in reporting? I have never seen an article that framed out a difference between residence on DL and where someone was staying.

No, you're correct. The article literally says he "lives" in Novi, not "stays." If there were a reason for the discrepancy it should have been explained in the article.

**Detroit500** · July-02-10, 07:19 PM

The Detroit Free Press has gone from being the premier liberal newspaper of the midwest to being hardly something that can be called a newspaper. The slide has been constant throughout the past 10 years but really since 2006 the decline has accelerated... in every sense. Even the great writers for the paper just don't have the same exemplary writing they did before.

The Detroit News on the other hand has got slightly worse, but despite terrible decisions from it's Gannett overlords has somehow managed to stay one-step-ahead of the larger circulation Free Press. [[they run more opinion pieces, have a film critic, haven't adopted this zany thing the Freep now does where it restarts articles on other pages instead of continuing them, the News has normal-size photos and fonts, etc.).

Really I wish these two papers would just merge so that reporters could be assigned to do more investigative reporting, write more hard-hitting articles, etc.... I was looking at a newspaper from January 1, 2000 today [[Det News & Free Press back when they combined on weekends), one from April 2006, and today's Freep & News and just was so disappointed about how quickly these once great papers deteriorated.

**313WX** · July-02-10, 07:41 PM

I don't think they purposely try to have an agenda, but one must realize a good percentage of Detroit's media is based in the suburbs and a fair majority of their employees reside in the suburbs. So naturally one must expect a suburbanite's viewpoint of the city ot be injected into the articles ever so often.

**detroitbob** · July-02-10, 08:28 PM

Well, lets face it, the News and Freep know they don't have the readership of the Detroit zip codes. and they are writing for their readers...a suburban audience. Does that influence, in my opinion, yes. The veteran newspaper writer/editor who knew Detroit top to bottom is a thing of the past, retired, laid off, or dead. The writers today, print and television, don't know the city, they only know the region, and that knowledge is surburban based, for the most part.

**jt1** · July-02-10, 09:31 PM

It appears that they changed it to "Southfield police officers fatally shot a 34-year-old Novi man late Thursday " after a number of hours.

Hmmmm.

**smogboy** · July-02-10, 09:49 PM

I think part of what drives journalism standards down overall [[not just in the Detroit market) is the immediacy in which content is supposed to be delivered. How many times have we seen "Breaking News" lead the newscasts? Back a dozen or so years ago, one could actually have an editor force the writer check their facts for accuracy or at least corroborate facts. The news folks now just seem hell bent on ambulance chasing and beating their peers to the punch

Integrity and facts have been sacrificed for immediacy.

**fryar** · July-02-10, 10:55 PM

Wouldn't they change it to "Novi man" either because of public pressure, or because they precisely don't have an agenda, as an organization. A mental slip, some inadvertent racism, if "Detroit man" indeed was code for black man, is something different - not something admirable, but something different. I realize the words inadvertent and racism don't often go together, and for good reason. But it is something different if the writer automatically assumed the black dude was from Detroit - not terribly cool, but something different from an anti-Detroit or anti-black agenda.

I wouldn't be surprised if somebody from there is on this board, or reads other Detroit-centric sites that may have touched on this, since it got corrected. I started trying to read through the 11 pages of reader comments to see if somebody there called them on it, but it was all just stomach-turning junk I couldn't handle. Worthless.

Is anybody here in a position to take issue with the idea that the readership of the News & Freep is almost entirely in the suburbs, that Detroiters really just don't read the paper, since I really hope that's an overblown statement? If not, what are Detroit ZIP codes reading? Is everybody just unplugged?

**East Detroit** · July-03-10, 12:23 AM

Originally Posted by detroitbob

... after seeing errors in both grammer and construcrion...

I share your pain.

**pffft** · July-03-10, 12:55 AM

errors in both grammer and construcrion,

I don't know, it might be a good idea to use good grammar and construction, not to mention spelling, in your critique.

**smogboy** · July-03-10, 02:39 AM

Originally Posted by Detroit500

The Detroit Free Press has gone from being the premier liberal newspaper of the midwest to being hardly something that can be called a newspaper. The slide has been constant throughout the past 10 years but really since 2006 the decline has accelerated... in every sense. Even the great writers for the paper just don't have the same exemplary writing they did before.

All we have to do is point to Mitch Albom's fabrication of the NCAA basketball story in 2005; there were no Spartan alums at the game as he had reported. If the Freep had any sense of journalistic integrity, they would've fired him immediately. Albom lost the one thing that we as a reading public count on the most from our journalists- he lost his credibility. Any article written from that point by Albom could be a total falsehood; we'll never know. Instead the Freep gently slaps him on the wrist, fines him some miniscule amount and let's him continue writing for them because he's their golden child who's written big time novels that have been produced into movies.

BAH! If Albom wants to write more Tuesdays With Morrie and any other semi-fictional books and keep his gab fest on the radio, I'm fine with it. Just step away from the paper in the capacity as a reporter. We readers expect better and quite honestly, deserve better from our papers.

Alas, I think that era has passed us and we're just going to get snippets of news being delivered unfiltered, unedited, not factually correct, and poorly produced for us now.

**dookie joe** · July-03-10, 02:56 AM

Originally Posted by smogboy

I think part of what drives journalism standards down overall [[not just in the Detroit market) is the immediacy in which content is supposed to be delivered. How many times have we seen "Breaking News" lead the newscasts? Back a dozen or so years ago, one could actually have an editor force the writer check their facts for accuracy or at least corroborate facts. The news folks now just seem hell bent on ambulance chasing and beating their peers to the punch

Integrity and facts have been sacrificed for immediacy.

As with almost any industry nowadays, there are fewer reporters being asked to do more. There used to be a lot more editors, copy editors and reporters, and the paper put out one product per day. [[Well, in the really old days, the papers would print several editions per day, but they had a lot more employees than modern newsrooms.)

However, I can't think of any recent incidents in Detroit where a reporter was found to have acted without integrity. And I can't recall any major stories they totally got wrong, either.

Confusing Novi with Detroit seems an innocuous mistake. It likely would have been caught by a copy editor -- back when they had tons of copy editors, that is.

**dookie joe** · July-03-10, 03:00 AM

Originally Posted by fryar

Wouldn't they change it to "Novi man" either because of public pressure, or because they precisely don't have an agenda, as an organization. A mental slip, some inadvertent racism, if "Detroit man" indeed was code for black man, is something different - not something admirable, but something different. I realize the words inadvertent and racism don't often go together, and for good reason. But it is something different if the writer automatically assumed the black dude was from Detroit - not terribly cool, but something different from an anti-Detroit or anti-black agenda.

I think you're reading too much into it. I'm thinking the reporter is so used to writing the phrase "a Detroit man" when it comes to crime, he inadvertantly put that in the story. Chalk it up to muscle memory, not racism.

**detroitbob** · July-03-10, 07:31 AM

Originally Posted by pffft

I don't know, it might be a good idea to use good grammar and construction, not to mention spelling, in your critique.

I also feel your pain.

Ravine · July-03-10, 09:37 AM

Originally Posted by detroitbob

Well, there is this wonderful book called the "A. P. STYLEBOOK", which USED TO BE
the holy bible for all journalism students while studying and the definitive guide 'for how to' for professional journalists. I recently asked a dear friend who is still in the newspaper business, after seeing errors in both grammer and construcrion, "Doesn't anyone use the stylebook anymore? Her reply cannot be printed here, suffice just to to say, it was a frustrated NO!

Your post is an unholy mess, and you pass judgment on the local newspapers?

**Detroit500** · July-03-10, 10:25 AM

smogboy, you're completely right, and the problem is, in terms of writing capability, Albom is one of the better folks they've got over there.

**Patrick** · July-03-10, 10:52 AM

So should the media even display suspect's home city in any story or not? A smiliar thing happens with SE michigan media not giving full physical descriptions of the perps. Was the guy short? Tall? Black? White?