Matt Hampel | matth.org

Another excellent Breaking News alert from the Snooze, this time field  on national chain Steve & Barry’s bankruptcy… but two days after a more informative and more local article was written by the Michigan Daily (!!)

Another marketroit post from the Snooze, this one for giant multinational Adidas. Mixed with a healthy dash of local retail quotes and Maize-and-Blue for disguise.

“When they saw the quality, everyone settled down,” Gove said. “It’s actually a little cheaper so people warmed up pretty quickly. We just have to get used to the three stripes as opposed to the swoosh.

Life becomes more and more like The Space Merchants.

 Someone’s spellchecker must have changed Craigslist to Craig’s List in this informative news story.

Another gem:

When contacted by The News via e-mail on Thursday afternoon, a representative of Craig’s List asked for a link to the ad and asked that questions be submitted by e-mail. The representative didn’t respond to a second e-mail asking to be contacted by phone. The online bulletin board service is user-monitored, with anyone able to flag questionable postings for deletion.

Two points,

1. The News didn’t link to the post in their first email.
2. Maybe the Craigslist reply isn’t clear, but they want to answer questions by EMAIL. Not by phone. That you can do journalism via email doesn’t seem to connect.

The Snooze published an article on three Ann Arbor restaurants dropping bottled water from their menus. Actually, make that two, since Zigerman’s never had bottled water anyways.

Two issues with the article:

1. They didn’t talk to any restaurants that still sell bottled water (here are more than 150, along with contact information)
2. For a viewpoint from the bottled water industry association, they copy-and-pasted a quote from their website:
   

   “The bottled water industry has an outstanding record and solid commitment to environmental stewardship and is a leader in the food and beverage industry in reducing its environmental footprint, while at the same time delivering the healthful value of bottled water to thirsty consumers,” the association says on its Web site.

Which is stellar journalism.

 So, I’ve been taking photos of the front page of the Ann Arbor News for about a week now. Missed a day here and there

I decided to grey out everything that wasn’t actually news. Now, that’s a very subjective decision (sometimes I thoght entertainment pieces were okay, sometimes not) — but I think you’ll be able to pull your own interpretation out of the images.

Some titles have been half-highlighted. That’s because the “News” often uses a massive titling font, eating up 4+ square inches when half the space would do.

30 April: A massive frontpage lead about one gas station? An article about a pig-shaped baloon? A free advertisement for Ben & Jerry’s? (B&Js being a national chain; their next-door competitor, a local shop)

1 May (two days later): Much better! Too much art and too much titling on the fairly useless feature article, though.

2 May: Gigantic movie ad expanding over the banner, maybe 6 to 8 square inches worth of headline. I should have highlighted  the useless center art, too. Newshouse filler piece, local photo also not actual news.

3 May: Actual news!

4 May: I had been removing these promotional stickers that come with our paper. This one stuck around for the photo.

Also featured: massive headlines, other “events”. “Madonna beats sexual clock.” 4 May on the citizen-run ArborUpdate: the city council agenda, and a discussion thereof.

Missed 5 May. (ArborUpdate talked about upcoming school elections)

6 May: HUGE area wasted on headlines, front-page article about someone who built a casket that looks like a can of beer.

7 May: Lots of space wasted to art. Massive headline.

There is a very important, nuanced difference between the News’ headine  and the New York Times headline for the same article:

8 May: 1/2 page Zingerman’s advertisement, etc. etc.

9 May: This is getting depressing. You can read it for yourself.

from the aanews:

Under the living-wage law, groups that have contracts with the city of $10,000 or more must pay above-minimum wages. That wage level is now around $12 an hour for employees who don’t receive health benefits

…

But upping the grant would increase the festival’s cost by some $19,000. And City Council Member Chris Easthope, who’s promoted the change, argues that the festival’s seasonal employees - almost all students - are not the kind of workers the wage law was meant to protect.

Thanks, Chris, for your beneficent leadership.

I’m hoping for a resurgence in news editors, and it seems very possible. A local writer, editor, and commentator of some sophistication will publish what was, in the 1700s and before, a subscription broadsheet. She will allready be an engaged citizen, reading all the local media deemed relevant, especially from nontraditional sources (blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Craigslist, Facebook, mailing lists) as well as governmental reports and the remnants of the local newspaper. She will analyze the news, make some fact-checking calls, and send it out to her subscribers, who are willing to pay $1 or $0.50 per [unit of time] to not have to filter everything. This won’t replace the social process of surfacing news, and it won’t be a full-time job, but it’ll make coherent reports possible in small civic settings where even a mass of participants cannot volunteer the energy to keep the interested informed.

http://thinkdetroit.blogspot.com/

(I’m waiting for a response from John here — so I will post an update)

John Mulcahy posted a civically-minded piece to the AA News Blog yesterday about a group of homes in Ypsilanti that were illegally connected to utilities. Of course, the News keeps the management company conveniently anonymous:

All of the affected homes are owned by one housing management company, though the residents have separate accounts with DTE, Simons said.

Many of the residents said they also were trying to get answers from a representative of the company that owns the units. An attempt by The Ann Arbor News to reach the representative was unsuccessful.

So, the News knows who owns the units, and the company won’t respond, yet they won’t publish the name. Yeah, that’s real community reportage there.